It saw Ireland's first ever winner of a golf major. It saw the decline of both our football and rugby teams. But it also marked 20 years of social partnership, which, many would argue, is the single most important contributing factor to our prosperity over the last couple of decades.

Significantly, 2007 is also the 70th anniversary of the CIPD in Ireland . . . the organisation dedicated to the development and promotion of good practice in the field of the management and development of people.

In fact, Ireland's involvement in CIPD (as it is now known) goes back further than its official 1937 inception. As far back as 1913, an Irishman (biscuit magnate Charles E Jacobs) met in New York with social thinker and chocolate maker Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, and from that meeting was established the Association of Welfare Officers, which morphed over the years into the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, or CIPD.

The progressive nature of this meeting of these great minds can be judged when seen against the industrial backdrop of the times . . . these were two major industrialists who managed to link the treatment of workers to overall productivity at a time when William Martin Murphy was masterminding the Dublin Lockout. But, in keeping with the future tradition of the CIPD, these were not starry-eyed philanthropists . . . instead, welfare work carried out in factories had been identified by forward-thinking business owners as sound business practice.

"CIPD is often misinterpreted as being peripheral to business, " said CIPD in Ireland's director Mike McDonnell. "But, from the word go there was a definite link between how you manage people and the bottom line.

Jacobs' view of management and men was not the prevailing view at the time, but while the establishment of what was to become the CIPD certainly benefited individuals, it also made a strong business case which is as true now as it was then . . . even today, HR people need to make a business case to justify their actions."

In 1933, the Association of Welfare Officers changed its name to the Institute of Labour management, and in 1937 it opened its doors in Ireland. It is perhaps apt that the first meeting in Ireland took place at the Jacobs factory on Aungier Street, on the site of a factory which is now a major DIT campus, where a number of the CIPD courses are currently taught.

The Institute of Labour Management changed its name again in 1946 to the Institute of Personnel Management, before becoming the Institute of Personnel and Development in1993 (despite its familiarity, it received its charter only in the year 2000). But, at each step along the way, it has not only reflected, but helped to shape both professional personnel management and general industrial relations.

"Look at what happened in 1946, when we changed our name to the Institute of Personnel Management, " said McDonnell. "The social backdrop was characterised by the Catholic Church's concerns with communism and organised labour; and, because of this, the Jesuits set up the Catholic Workers College (subsequently the National College of Industrial Relations (NCIR) and now the National College of Ireland). This was established to show people that they could be both good Catholics and good trade unionists.

"Then, in 1959, ICTU was formed, followed in 1960 by the new Department of Labour, " he continued. "So Ireland moved from the welfare phase to the organised labour phase, and we saw the emergence of the trade unions as the representations of industry. This organised labour phase, which lasted through the 1970s up to the 1980s, was characterised by adversarial industrial relations, and hence the primary focus of personnel managers was on industrial relations."

According to McDonnell, the country was in dire straits.

"Everybody seemed to be on strike, " he said. "And, if this continued, then Ireland was going to go down the tubes. But the government got together, and I have to say it was largely thanks to the then Minister for Labour Bertie Ahern, to put together the programme for National Recovery in October 1987."

From this was social partnership born, and it was almost 20 years ago to the day that an era of relative peace was ushered in (at least from an industrial relations perspective). And it was this peace that put in place the conditions for the massive amounts of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which has allowed so many Irish people to drive new German cars.

"The business of personnel then moved into HR management, " said Mike McDonnell. "The 1970s and 1980s tended to operate a collective approach to workers, but HR saw them as individuals. But the most obvious shift, from our perspective, was the evolution of a theoretical base for personnel management.

"Other branches of management development in the 1970s and 1980s were adopting a theoretical base, but there was a feeling that there was no theory underpinning industrial relations, and that practitioners acquired their skills through experience. But pioneering people in the institute realised that, if they were to be taken seriously as a branch of management, they would have to develop a science of the development of people."

Thus, since the 1980s, Ireland has seen a massive growth in personnel and HR education. This was provided by NCIR (at the time), as well as some of the traditional and new universities, and this education has been a significant factor in the growth of CIPD, to a position where it now has 6,300 members in Ireland.

"The growth of the Institute has been significant, " said McDonnell. "But the real shift in Ireland has been the move away from complacency. Industrialisation came late to this country, and the demographics meant that there was always a surplus of young people. So companies felt that, even if they lost an employee, there would always be 10 or 12 people to fill the job. This plentiful supply of labour led to a cavalier approach to labour turnover and the management of people. But in the year 1998, with McKinsey & Co's "War for Talent" study, Ireland was hit for the first time by the realisation that there was a skills shortage. This led to an almost overnight shift, and companies were facing the question not only of how to attract people, but also how to retain them."

Social partnership has been a defining characteristic of our modern economy, but recent signs are showing that the partnership approach may be running its course. So where does CIPD fit in with the next era of Irish economic development?

"Once the current partnership agreement has run its course, I believe that it will be time for serious reflection on the concept of social partnership, " he said.

"It has achieved a lot, but one area of disappointment has been the very slow pace of public sector reform. The current industrial relations issues with Aer Lingus and CIE are manifestations of old-fashioned public sector thinking, and these create a perception of slowness to change and an inability to embrace accountability and responsibility. So, if social partnership is to survive, in the same way that it demonstrated the ability to end adversarial IR practices it will need to demonstrate the capacity to lead to real change in the public sector."