Frances Ruane, new head of the ESRI, talks to Marc Colemanabout her experience and influences

What Ségolène Royale is to French politics, Frances Ruane is to the Irish economics profession. An Irish economics scene reeking of old socks and testosterone has been in dire need of feminisation for several years now. As she becomes director general of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) on December 1st, Frances Ruane is set to provide just that.

Back in 1974, Frances became the first and only female economist in the Central Bank. She also remembers being the only one who could type and recalls one evening, as she typed her PhD application on the bank's only typewriter, being quietly warned by a male colleague to be careful lest her skill land her a post as unofficial pool typist for her colleagues.

Next Friday she becomes the head of the State's most important independent economic organisation. Sometimes it is ignored: in 1994 the ESRI correctly predicted that the economy would boom for a decade and went on to call for greater infrastructure spending, only to be ignored by the then government. It was again ignored when it criticised the latest National Development Plan for trying to do too much too soon. But just as often its message gets through. On the morning of our interview, The Irish Times is leading with a promise by Bertie Ahern not to go on a pre-election spending binge, something the ESRI has warned about several times.

Frances Ruane understands that the ESRI has influence, but also that it has to be handled carefully. First appointed to a State board by former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, she was appointed an IDA Ireland board member in 1992 by Desmond O'Malley and put on the board of Forfás by Ruairí Quinn. She has remained non-partisan by cultivating a delicate political touch.

Until next Friday though, she remains an economics don at Trinity College Dublin and,wearing that hat, I engage her in some topical issues. A strong attack on the Estimates for ramping up infrastructure spending despite ESRI warnings would do very nicely. But her comments on the National Development Plan are less direct than those of other ESRI economists John Fitzgerald or Alan Barrett. "I think the ESRI was right to warn that there could be a huge cost to the economy. . . if infrastructure investment ends up in construction inflation. Nobody wins from that."

She is more direct on the issue of income tax. "I would have thought the priority is to achieve a broadening of bands, rather than a cutting of rates." She also believes that the higher rate of income tax should be automatically indexed to inflation "It makes it more straightforward. It takes thinking about that out of the equation."

But how do people become energised about issues like tax indexation and industrial policy? Frances's interest in economics comes from an early childhood experience.

"Basically my brother studied economics and hated it, but he had his books around the house and when I picked it up I decided I liked economics," she says.

The brother went on to become a sociologist. "I was also keen to start something new at college and economics in those days wasn't done at school. I did keep my options open to do town planning from the beginning."

Although she eventually chose economics, Frances became a planner of sorts, starting work with the then Industrial Development Agency (IDA) as an industrial planning officer in 1971. "That gave me my first introduction to industrial policy and it's something that has stayed with me ever since. It's had a huge impact on me."

Frances recalls how little economics was being used in policy formulation and, as she talks about those early years, I get a depressing sense of how Ireland's economic policy mistakes keep repeating themselves. "At that stage, there was virtually no project appraisal and yet they were giving out large-scale grants," she says, echoing the ESRI's October report on the National Development Plan which castigated the lack of project appraisal in recent transport investments.

Yet another comment on the past sums up a policy disease that has continued long into the present. "I was involved in the regional industrial plans and it didn't seem to me that there was a spatial policy."

From the IDA, she went on to the Central Bank in 1973. Despite having been the only woman there, she retains fond memories of the Central Bank. "It was a time when the Central Bank had suddenly grown. TK Whitaker had come in and he believed in increasing the number of economists. It was a very young and interesting group of people there at the time."

Despite this, academia beckoned and, in 1974, Frances went to Oxford to begin her PhD. Her first years as an economist in the IDA had been impotent ones, but her PhD on industrial grant policy put her on the road to influence.

"At the time and at the level I was at, I couldn't have any influence on policy. In the 1970s, a debate did come up on that topic and I played a role in it". If only a small role, it was an important step across the threshold from impotence to power. In 1977 she started work in Trinity College Dublin. Ironically, she was given the desk of Martin O'Donoghue, who had just become minister for economic policy development.

But failed government attempts to manage the macroeconomy in 1977 left many economists disillusioned with macroeconomics and Frances's earlier passion for the micro side was to stand her in good stead in coming years. "1977 showed macro policy in action and, in 1977, everyone was talking about macro but an analysis would have shown that the important thing was getting our microeconomic policies right."

Frances's subsequent positions have been consistent with her passion for microeconomics. As well as the National Board of Science and Technology, she has served on the board of the IDA, Forfás and the Foundation for Fiscal Studies - all of them bodies doing research with a policy focus.

Her main hope for her new job is to obtain enough funding to see through an intergrated agenda of research on long-term policy issues. From the dreaming spires of Oxford, Frances Ruane has reached the spire of applied policy research in one of the world's most successful economies. She promises to bring a blend of both to her new job. "The ESRI is in the unusual position of being an interface between academia and the policy frontier. It is in a great position to do policy-focused research of academic interest, but that will be policy-relevant".