National research and innovation agency Research Ireland published its inaugural strategy, Curiosity, Capability, Competitiveness – Charting Ireland’s Research and Innovation Future, last month. The strategy commits the organisation to close collaboration with stakeholders to deliver on a series of objectives across the three themes of talent, economy and society.
The strategy has now been followed up with the publication of the agency’s 2026 Programme Plan. The plan builds on the strategy’s commitments for the agency to fund excellent discovery research across all disciplines, while also working proactively to accelerate innovation and impact – connecting researchers to enterprise, investors, policymakers and international partners.
The strategy and plan mark significant milestones for the organisation which was formed through the merger of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Irish Research Council, explains Dr Ruth Freeman, the agency’s director of research for society.
“With any merger of organisations there is a lot of important activity that must continue,” she adds. “We have now put that into a formal strategy as well as looking ahead to new activities. We have spent a lot of time talking to stakeholders in the research and innovation community across Ireland. We got a good sense of what’s essential and what the community values. We listened to them, tested ideas and discussed how we could deliver the strategy.”
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Those conversations with university leaders, students and researchers at all career stages, enterprise partners and professional staff have strongly influenced the development of the 2026 Programme Plan.
“All the building blocks are still there,” says Freeman. “Consistent predictable funding for research is critically important. We are approaching it in a slightly different way. We are leaning into partnerships and instead of being an arm’s length funder we want to work closely with institutions to enable them to invest in talent and achieve their objectives.”
Freeman says the plan includes continued strong support for researchers and research careers, no reduction in support for PhDs, regular opportunities for early-career researchers via the Research Ireland Pathway programme, and annual calls under the new Investigators Programme.
There will also be new and more integrated funding mechanisms that strengthen partnership with research bodies. A new strategic institutional funding mechanism will be developed to support PhD studentships and postdoctoral fellowships – previously supported under the Government of Ireland programme – and to consolidate supplementary grants, while strengthening research and innovation capacity across the system.
Alongside those elements, Research Ireland will work with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and the Higher Education Authority to deliver the Inspire Programme for infrastructure.
“The Inspire programme has been spearheaded by Minister Lawless in response to researchers saying infrastructure investment is urgently required,” says Freeman. “The last time there was a big injection of infrastructure funding was through the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI) which finished in 2018.
“The equipment is old and is not cutting edge, and much of it needs repair and replacement. We can’t expect research to be cutting edge if researchers are working with outdated equipment. The Higher Education Authority will deliver local infrastructure funding at institution level while Research Ireland will deliver shared national infrastructure.”
In addition to existing Research Ireland programmes, the establishment of new centres for research training is being explored. This will follow on from the previous SFI programme which provided cohorts of academically outstanding future research leaders with the skills and knowledge required to address the future challenges.
The focus isn’t only on scientific research. “The societal impact of our schemes is also important,” Freeman notes. “A lot of funding for arts, humanities and social sciences research has been fragmented in the past. We want to look at topics where it makes sense for Ireland to pull funding together to achieve greater impact. We will be talking to stakeholders about that.”
Challenge funding aimed at supporting teams to solve societal problems will also continue. “We have built up a lot of experience in that. It’s about solving problems in a collaborative interdisciplinary way, and we will be doing something in that space as well.”
Looking at new initiatives, Freeman says the agency’s broader mandate enables it to look again at what it does and what can be done better. “We want to activate more spin-outs from the research system. There is really good support there for companies once they exist, but we need to help more people to turn their ideas into spin-outs. Companies like Mbryonics and APC show what can be done, but we need to do more.”
She concludes by thanking all those who took part in the conversations that led to the development of the strategy and programme plan. “They have been really supportive,” she says. “Also, Minister Lawless worked really hard to get the extra funding. That has been very important in helping us build on what has been done already. We will continue to work with other institutions and agencies to innovate and co-create new programmes.”
