Policy information
All-island, EU and global research connectivity
From Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science
Published on
Last updated on
As part of its Shared Island mission, the Programme for Government includes plans to “develop and deepen all aspects of north-south cooperation”, with research activity explicitly highlighted. The Government has approved €40m in funding over five years from the Shared Island Fund to the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. This will fund research programmes to meet this goal. The Higher Education Authority is running the programme on behalf of the department.
The department is responsible for the R&I configuration of the Competitiveness Council. The main objective of the Competitiveness Council is to improve competitiveness and increase growth in the EU. It covers four major policy areas: the internal market, industry, R&I and space.
Technical discussions on issues to be adopted by the Competitiveness Council are undertaken by the Research Working Party, supported by department officials. Ireland is represented at the Research Working Party meetings by its Research and Innovation Attaché.
Horizon Europe is a major research and innovation funding programme run by the European Commission. It will give out €95.5 billion in competitive grants and supports for researchers and scientists across the European Union, from 2021 to 2027.
The department has overall lead responsibility for Horizon Europe engagement. It chairs a high level group of departments, agencies and research funders. This group works to maximise the opportunities available to researchers across Irish academia and industry.
Enterprise Ireland leads a national support structure to share information and give support to the Irish research community in securing Horizon Europe funds.
InterTradeIreland supports North-South collaboration between researchers and innovators, including opportunities coming from Horizon Europe.
The US-Ireland R&D Partnership was developed as part of the US contribution to the peace process. It involves the governments of the United States of America, Ireland and Northern Ireland working together to advance scientific progress.
A steering group representing the three jurisdictions guides collaborative efforts under the partnership. Each jurisdiction provides a co-chair to the steering group. The department supports this group with InterTradeIreland, which provides secretariat support to the steering group.
Under the Third Country Researchers Directive, Council Directive 2005/71/EC , Ireland offers a fast-track work permit , or a hosting agreement, for third-country researchers from countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
For more information on the directive please click here.
ELIXIR unites Europe’s leading life-science organisations in managing and safeguarding the increasing volume of data being generated by publicly-funded research.
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an inter-governmental research organisation established in 1974. EMBL’s mission is the development of molecular biology throughout Europe.
The European Molecular Biology Conference is an inter-governmental organisation made up of EU member states. EMBC promotes a strong transnational approach to the life sciences.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe, and the world's most productive astronomical observatory. ESO's main mission is to provide state-of-the-art research facilities to astronomers and astrophysicists. It does this by building and operating a suite of the world's most powerful ground-based astronomical telescopes to enable important scientific discoveries.
The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking is a joint initiative between the EU, European countries and private partners. The initiative allows these partners to coordinate efforts and pool resources to develop a world-class supercomputing and quantum computing ecosystem in Europe.
LOFAR, the low-frequency array , is a radio telescope working at the lowest frequencies accessible from Earth to observe the Universe in unprecedented detail. LOFAR is one of the largest astrophysics projects in Europe, with a network of radio telescopes distributed across the continent.
The Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire (CECAM) is a pan-European network that supports joint research and collaboration in computational simulation science. The main objective of CECAM is to implement a research strategy in computational science that boosts the capability of the partner organisations to address emerging challenges in science and technology.
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an environment for hosting and processing research data to support EU science. EOSC facilitates open science by offering European researchers the opportunity to access and reuse all publicly funded research data in Europe across disciplines and borders.