Research Funding
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-25
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Kieran O'Donnell (FG), Limerick City

I thank Deputy Cummins for raising this issue, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy James Lawless. I welcome the opportunity to update colleagues on how the arts, humanities, and social sciences will be supported through the Research Ireland strategy and the progress on implementation to date.
Research Ireland was established as the national research and innovation funding agency to promote and continue developing excellence in research across all disciplines, including arts, humanities and social sciences, AHSS. The new agency strategy was published in March of this year. The strategy names AHSS as a distinctive national strength, with a role across all three impact themes: talent, society and the economy. The strategy safeguards AHSS funding through a guaranteed minimum floor, which will ensure continuity of funding for AHSS at or above existing levels. No cuts are proposed to funding or to the number of places being funded by the agency.
The dedicated society impact theme commits to investment in strengthening capacity across the breadth of disciplines and enabling interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to bring together diverse perspectives, expertise and cross-government support to tackle key societal challenges. The agency will be working to strengthen engagement and collaboration with wider research users and performers, such as not-for-profit organisations and charities, and the arts and culture sector, to drive and showcase greater benefit to society.
Basic, fundamental research is also firmly recognised and supported within Research Ireland’s strategy. It has been a consistent goal of this Government to support fundamental and frontier research at all times, and this is set out strongly. There has been substantial consultation across the research system in developing the new strategy, and there is ongoing consultation on implementation. The agency has a remit to be more than a funder, and to also work in partnership across a more cohesive system with researchers, institutions and representative bodies to ensure that the strategy delivers for all disciplines. This work is ongoing. The agency also has a role in supporting higher education institutions in developing research and innovation strategies of their own.
A key action of the strategy is to review existing PhD funding programmes and develop an enhanced suite of programmes, with the ambition to make Ireland the leading location in Europe for PhD training, in partnership with the HEIs and the wider system. The agency is currently undertaking consultation on a proposed strategic institutional funding model, as an evolution of the Government of Ireland programme, which is intended to: reduce the administrative burden for students; provide more security and stability of funding across a course of research or study; address issues in relation to researchers accessing funding for materials or consumables, travel and networking funding; address maternity, paternity and adoptive leave supplements; and enhance long-term planning and institutional capability.
Since February 2026, Research Ireland has conducted more than 20 engagement sessions, including seven in-person AHSS-focused events across the country and two national webinars attended by more than 700 participants. The senior leadership from the agency have met with research leaders and researchers across the country, and with the representative bodies.
The proposed new model would bring the agency funding model for these awards closer to international best practice. The agency funding portfolio is split almost evenly, and it is intended to maintain this balance across the programme plan and agency funding portfolio. Other calls funded or managed by the agency now available to AHSS researchers include: public service fellowships; challenge funding, which is open to all disciplines; and international calls, such as the Research Ireland-UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council joint call on creative industries.
The agency has prioritised growing investigator-led funding in planning, recognising the increasing demand for investigator-led research funding. The Minister, Deputy Lawless, is aware of these issues, and he met with representatives of the signatories earlier this week to examine the concerns raised. This has been a constructive and positive ongoing engagement, with insight from the research community informing the design of the new programme. There is consensus on what must be protected: excellence, transparency, mobility and disciplinary diversity.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-25