Brendan Halligan, economist and politician, is born in Dublin on July 5, 1936. He is founder and president of the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), a think tank on European and international issues. He is president of the Ireland China Institute, an independent think tank based in Dublin which is officially launched in October 2019. His career spans Irish public sector bodies and work in the private sector. At various times he is General Secretary of the Labour Party, a Teachta Dála (TD), a Senator, and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

Halligan grows up in Rialto, Dublin, and is educated at St. James’s Christian Brothers School, Dublin. He studies at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and becomes a chemical analyst in the CIÉ depot in Inchicore. He and three friends decided to go to university and form a co-operative and work at various jobs in London to fund their studies. In 1959, he begins an economics and law degree at University College Dublin (UCD). There he is influenced by lecturers including George O’Brien, Patrick Lynch and Garret FitzGerald. He receives a master’s degree in economics from UCD in 1964.

Following an early career as an economist, working with the Irish Sugar Company until 1967, Halligan becomes involved in politics. In that year, he becomes General Secretary of the Labour Party.

The party leader, Brendan Corish, relies on Halligan’s intellectual and political skills in his new role. Under Halligan, the party undergoes an energetic reorganisation. New structures and policies are put in place, coinciding with the party’s leftward policy shift and an acute anti-coalition stance. He strongly supports both approaches, but is instrumental in securing the party’s eventual, somewhat unwilling, reversal of its anti-coalition stance after its disappointing result in the 1969 Irish general election. The 1973 Irish general election results in a Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition government coming to power.

Halligan is appointed to Seanad Éireann in 1973. Three years later, he wins a by-election in Dublin South-West, and thus becomes a TD. After boundary changes, he stands in the new Dublin Finglas at the 1977 Irish general election but is not elected. He stands again in the revived Dublin North-West constituency at the 1981 and November 1982 Irish general elections, but again is not elected.

Halligan continues to serve as General Secretary of the party until 1980, and is appointed a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1983 until 1984, replacing Frank Cluskey, where he specialises in economic affairs and energy policy.

In 1980, Halligan sets up CIPA, his own public affairs consultancy based in Dublin, and becomes a lecturer in Economics at the University of Limerick. He is also chairman of European Movement Ireland during the late 1980s. In 1985, he is appointed as Chairman of Bord na Móna, the Irish Peat Development Authority, a position he holds for ten years. In 1989 he founds the Institute of European Affairs (IEA), which later becomes the IIEA. He is Director of CIPA until 2014.

Resulting from his keen interest and experience in energy policy and renewable energy, Halligan serves as Chair of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland from 2007 until 2014. He is President of the IIEA, and he is also a Board Member of Mainstream Renewable Energy.

In later years Halligan also works on the foundation and development of the Ireland China Institute (ICI), which, with its maxim bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding, seeks to strengthen Irish-Chinese diplomatic relations, developing cultural links and fostering a deeper understanding of the respective cultural norms and values between the two nations. He is also President of ICI.

Halligan dies on August 9, 2020, after a long illness. On his death, Taoiseach Micheál Martin describes him as “a man who gave his life to politics and the public service with a deep commitment to the institutions of the state.” European Commissioner for Trade Phil Hogan states that “Brendan was a committed European to his fingertips. He was a pragmatic European intellectual, in the tradition of Spinelli, Monnet and Schuman.”