Biography
Danny McCoy has been an national and international business leader and acclaimed economist for over 30 years.
His high public profile and media presence since the 1990s means he has been an interlocutor to five Irish Taoisaigh (Prime Ministers) and been appointed to over 30 High Level Commissions both in Ireland and at the European level.
He attended meetings at the US White House and UK Downing Street, given speeches at the United Nations General Assembly of the International Labour Organisation and has been keynote speakers at over 40 international conferences.
He has led out on three national referenda on pro EU amendments to the Irish Constitution and has been centrally involved with the Brexit debate as far back as 2012 with three different UK Prime Ministers.
He has championed the Joint Business Council on the All Island in Ireland bringing together business leaders across jurisdictions and religious divides underpinning the Irish Peace Process and the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement.
He has been the longest serving leader of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (Ibec) which he has transformed to be the largest lobbying organisation in Ireland and third largest in Europe. It has doubled in scale and trebled in profitability.
He is also the longest serving national business representative organisation leader at the Executive Council of BusinessEurope and has interacted with six European Council and Commission Presidents in that time including the President of the European Central Bank and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund during Ireland’s Troika era post the Great Financial Crash.
His academic work in the run up to the creation of the Euro on assymetric shocks in currency unions, fiscal sustainability and inflation targeting while at the Central Bank of Ireland brought him into research groups with the Banca d’Italia including two stints at summer schools in Perugia.
His academic work at University College London and University of Oxford on the double dividends from carbon taxation and the operationalising of the concept of sustainable development have brought him to many international symposium including those organised by Harvard University in Boston, Bocconi University in Milan and the World Bank in Washington DC.
He has been recognised by the Irish President O’Higgins to deliver a keynote address at the President Palace (a unique invitation) on Sustainable Development challenges, been selected as the 59th President of the Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland (175 year old prestigious academic society), made an honorary engineer by the Academy of Engineering for service to national infrastructure development.
He received a Knighthood from the Italian Republic in 2022, Cavaliere of the Order of the Star of Italy, for services to European business and economy. He is a member of the Board of Iput Real Estate.