About Us
Background
Fitzpatrick Associates is one of Ireland’s leading independent specialist economic, socio-economic, policy and strategy consultancies. Established in 1983, it is one of the longest-established firms of independent economic advisors to government, companies and non-governmental organisations.
Our Aim
Our core aim is to help our clients make better, more evidence-informed decisions. We do this by bringing to these decisions our mix of pertinent information, systematic research, rigorous analysis, and sound judgement based on experience.
Key Strengths
- 1. In-depth knowledge of information sources, published and unpublished, giving clients the quantitative and qualitative benefit of the best available information.
- 2. Strong economically-based research and analytical skills, ensuring that client decisions are based on rigorous factual analysis
- 3. Extensive experience of working with other disciplines, ensuring that complex issues are addressed in a suitably inter-disciplinary manner
- 4. Tailored approaches to clients’ individual topics, interests and needs, and appreciation that one size rarely fits all
- 5. Close involvement in a wide range of Irish and international policy-making, bringing this wide range of contextual knowledge to our client’s decision-making
- 6. Ability to achieve a high degree of analytically based consensus among apparently conflicting perspectives
- 7. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ensuring that the outcome of our work is understood by busy audiences
- 8. Appreciation of diverse organisational cultures and stakeholder interests, ensuring that differing issues and viewpoints are dealt with sensitively and constructively
- 9. A track-record of solid delivery, ensuring that what is promised and agreed is what you get.
Value-Added
Our core service is typically envisaged as provision of a written consultancy report. We do indeed do this, but we often provide much more.
- Additional consultations: it frequently emerges during the course of projects that the scale and necessity for consultations is wider than that originally envisaged by the client and the ToR. In these cases we are frequently the instigators of the necessity for the consultation with a wider range of stakeholders;
- Additional presentations: like additional consultations, another frequent feature of projects is the need for multiple presentations, both during and afterwards, to groups of stakeholders who are not initially anticipated as necessary by the client;
- Consensus building: in many cases, projects undertaken by us involve not just research and analysis, but also an element of consensus building within or between departments and stakeholders about difficult or sensitive issues. This generally involves considerable effort in terms of formal and informal consultations, greater numbers of meetings than originally anticipated, and multiple rounds of report editing. The need for this analytically-based consensus building service is typically not very clearly or explicitly articulated in ToRs;
- Client staff capacity building: we frequently provide a degree of staff development and capacity building on the client’s side, e.g. explanations as to how analysis is being done, explanation of key concepts, invitations to participate in case study interviews, etc. and this not charged;
- Advice on cost-effective solutions: we often, either outside the contractual context or at inception phase, advise clients about cost-effective ways of achieving some of the objectives of a project or better use of the project resources via means which they had not anticipated;
- Communication support: while typically not part of our Terms of Reference, we frequently provide pragmatic support to communication of the results of our work through e.g. drafting of press releases, preparation of synopses and presentations, and participation in briefings by the client;
- Organisational culture: we frequently make a positive contribution to organisational culture, in particular regarding awareness of the importance of evidence and analysis in decision-making.
Key Strengths
- 1. In-depth knowledge of information sources, published and unpublished, giving clients the quantitative and qualitative benefit of the best available information.
- 2. Strong economically-based research and analytical skills, ensuring that client decisions are based on rigorous factual analysis
- 3. Extensive experience of working with other disciplines, ensuring that complex issues are addressed in a suitably inter-disciplinary manner
- 4. Tailored approaches to clients’ individual topics, interests and needs, and appreciation that one size rarely fits all
- 5. Close involvement in a wide range of Irish and international policy-making, bringing this wide range of contextual knowledge to our client’s decision-making
- 6. Ability to achieve a high degree of analytically based consensus among apparently conflicting perspectives
- 7. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ensuring that the outcome of our work is understood by busy audiences
- 8. Appreciation of diverse organisational cultures and stakeholder interests, ensuring that differing issues and viewpoints are dealt with sensitively and constructively
- 9. A track-record of solid delivery, ensuring that what is promised and agreed is what you get.
Value-Added
Our core service is typically envisaged as provision of a written consultancy report. We do indeed do this, but we often provide much more.
- Additional consultations: it frequently emerges during the course of projects that the scale and necessity for consultations is wider than that originally envisaged by the client and the ToR. In these cases we are frequently the instigators of the necessity for the consultation with a wider range of stakeholders;
- Additional presentations: like additional consultations, another frequent feature of projects is the need for multiple presentations, both during and afterwards, to groups of stakeholders who are not initially anticipated as necessary by the client;
- Consensus building: in many cases, projects undertaken by us involve not just research and analysis, but also an element of consensus building within or between departments and stakeholders about difficult or sensitive issues. This generally involves considerable effort in terms of formal and informal consultations, greater numbers of meetings than originally anticipated, and multiple rounds of report editing. The need for this analytically-based consensus building service is typically not very clearly or explicitly articulated in ToRs;
- Client staff capacity building: we frequently provide a degree of staff development and capacity building on the client’s side, e.g. explanations as to how analysis is being done, explanation of key concepts, invitations to participate in case study interviews, etc. and this not charged;
- Advice on cost-effective solutions: we often, either outside the contractual context or at inception phase, advise clients about cost-effective ways of achieving some of the objectives of a project or better use of the project resources via means which they had not anticipated;
- Communication support: while typically not part of our Terms of Reference, we frequently provide pragmatic support to communication of the results of our work through e.g. drafting of press releases, preparation of synopses and presentations, and participation in briefings by the client;
- Organisational culture: we frequently make a positive contribution to organisational culture, in particular regarding awareness of the importance of evidence and analysis in decision-making.