Scientific Research
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

The programme will be delivered in two phases and will be managed by the Higher Education Authority in the first phase and by Research Ireland in the second. The first phase will establish a strategic baseline across the sector such that all investments are grounded in a systematic alignment with the particular university or HEI. It is a competitive fund and not a case of there being one for everyone in the audience. Funding will be awarded based upon excellence and impact, in alignment with the university. Universities are encouraged to put together their own proposals and they will be considered by an expert panel. That panel will be entirely independent and I will not have an involvement in it. The proposals will be peer-reviewed by expert academics who probably will be external to the country.
That is how it was done in PRTLI before and it is best practice internationally.
In terms of the shared infrastructure, the way it is envisaged to work is this. They are large items with a minimum €500,000 price tag; some may be multiples of that, depending on the item. Again, it would be a competitive call. All universities, effectively, would be invited in to put forward their proposals. There would be a competitive process that would then go into a central portal, which other universities can share it from.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11