Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship

The Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship (GOIPG) is Ireland’s national, all-disciplines scholarship for individual master’s-by-research and PhD candidates, funded by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and administered by Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann). It carries forward the flagship individual-award scheme originated by the former Irish Research Council (IRC) before the 2024 SFI/IRC merger — for the wider organisational and merger context, see CASRAI’s IRC funding overview and Research Ireland guide. This page does not repeat that background; it covers the scholarship’s own mechanics — eligibility, funding value, duration, application process, review criteria, and award terms — in the depth a prospective applicant or a host-institution research office actually needs.

A note on currency: the figures, dates, and criteria below are drawn from Research Ireland’s published 2026 GOIPG Call Document (covering applications for scholarships starting 1 September 2026). Research Ireland runs this call annually and reserves the right to amend eligibility, values, and dates each year, so treat the structure described here as representative and confirm the live figures for the current call year at researchireland.ie’s funding listing before relying on any specific number for an application.

What the Scholarship Covers: Funding Value and Duration

GOIPG funds suitably qualified master’s-by-research and doctoral candidates pursuing full-time research in any discipline, from a full-degree grant of up to four years down to a partial award for applicants who have already started their degree.

Funding value

The scholarship is worth up to a maximum of €34,000 per approved year, made up of three fixed components that must be accepted together — partial acceptance of only one or two of the three headings is not permitted under any circumstances:

Stipend: €25,000 per year, paid to the scholar.
Fees contribution: up to €5,750 per year, paid directly to the host research body, covering fees including non-EU fees. Non-EU nationals may additionally request up to €4,000 per year over and above the standard fee contribution; any remaining fee differential is payable by the scholar and/or the host institution.
Eligible direct research costs: €3,250 per year, to enable the scholar to carry out the research project (e.g. travel, materials, training).

No overheads are payable to the host institution under this scheme.

Duration

Duration depends on degree type and, for applicants already partway through their degree, on the date of first registration:

New entrants (not yet registered, or applying before commencing) are funded for the full duration of the degree: 2 years for a master’s by research, 4 years for a PhD.
Applicants who have already registered but completed no more than the first year of the degree may be eligible for partial funding — in the 2026 call, this meant 1 year of funding for a master’s by research and 3 years for a doctoral degree, tied to a first-registration window the call document specifies exactly (registrations before 1 September of the prior academic year were ineligible for that call). This window shifts with each annual call, so check the current call document rather than assuming the same dates apply.
Documented eligible career breaks (maternity, paternity, adoptive, parental, parent’s, extended sick, or carer’s leave taken after first registration) can adjust an applicant’s period of eligibility — for example, the 2026 call granted an automatic 18-month adjustment per child for maternity leave, with other break types adjusted by the documented length of leave taken. Applicants relying on this route apply through their host Research Office, which endorses the adjustment; documentation (never health/medical detail) is provided to Research Ireland only if specifically requested.

All GOIPG grants operate full-time only, and the scholar must be based full-time at the nominated Eligible Research Body for the duration of the award.

Who Can Apply: Eligibility Criteria

Applicant (scholar) eligibility

Degree stage: open to master’s-by-research and PhD candidates who are new entrants to the degree for which they are seeking funding, or who have completed no more than the first year of that degree (see Duration above).
Prior academic qualification: applicants must hold a first-class or upper-second-class honours bachelor’s degree (or equivalent); applicants without that classification must instead hold a master’s degree. Research Ireland’s determination on equivalence is final.
No age limit.
Institutional affiliation: applicants must be affiliated with an Eligible Research Body (a university, institute of technology, or other Research Ireland–approved research-performing institution), which verifies the applicant’s prior degree results and administers the award if successful.
Application language: Irish or English only.
Application history: applicants must not have had two previous unsuccessful applications to the programme, regardless of whether they changed host institution or research topic since.
Employment status: applicants must not be a permanent member of staff at an Irish or international research body.
Prior Research Ireland funding: master’s applicants must not currently or previously have held any Research Ireland scholarship, and must not already hold any kind of master’s degree (research or taught). Doctoral applicants must not currently or previously have held a Research Ireland scholarship other than one that enabled them to obtain a master’s degree. Anyone who already holds a PhD is ineligible for any degree type under this scheme.

Nationality and residency

Applicants of any nationality may hold a GOIPG award, but eligibility is split into two categories that materially affect success rates (see below):

Category 1 — applicants who are BOTH (a) a national of an EU member state (including Ireland), Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, the UK, or Ukraine, AND (b) ordinarily resident in one of those states for a continuous period of three of the five years preceding the relevant reference date in the call.
Category 2 — all other applicants, who do not meet both Category 1 conditions. Research Ireland funds a smaller proportion of Category 2 applicants, reserved for exceptional candidates.

Primary supervisor eligibility

Must be based at an Eligible Research Body in Ireland approved by Research Ireland.
Must be a permanent or contracted member of academic staff on a minimum 50% FTE contract spanning at least the full period of the grant. Research fellows cannot act as primary supervisors; retired academic staff may, at the host institution’s discretion, if they remain research-active and accessible.
Must have the capacity (facilities, resources, availability) to support the proposed project.
One applicant per call: a primary supervisor may support only one GOIPG applicant per call round. If a Research Office endorses two applications naming the same primary supervisor, both are deemed ineligible. There is no such limit on secondary or co-supervisor roles.

How Competitive Is It? Success Rates

GOIPG is a genuinely competitive national scheme, not a formality for eligible applicants. Research Ireland’s 2026 call document cites an average success rate of 18% over the preceding five years across the core programme. For the 2025 round specifically, the published breakdown was:

Overall success rate by stream: STEM 12%; Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) 16%.
Success rate for Category 2 applicants specifically (as a share of eligible Category 2 applications): STEM 2%; AHSS 3%.

The gap between the overall and Category-2-only rates reflects that most awards go to Category 1 applicants, with a smaller allocation reserved for exceptional Category 2 candidates. These figures are call-specific and Research Ireland does not guarantee they recur at the same level each year.

Application Process and Timeline

All applications are submitted through Research Ireland’s online system; no hard-copy or email submissions are accepted at any stage. The 2026 call ran to this structure, given here to illustrate the shape and typical spacing of the process rather than as fixed annual dates:

Call opens — applicants gain access to the online system after passing a preliminary eligibility quiz (passing the quiz is not confirmation of eligibility).
Applicant deadline — roughly six weeks after call opening in the 2026 cycle (11 September to 23 October 2025). Applicants are strongly advised to submit at least eight hours ahead of the deadline given expected server load.
Primary supervisor deadline — roughly two weeks after the applicant deadline, for the supervisor to submit an endorsement form. An application without a matching, completed supervisor endorsement is ineligible.
Research Office (host institution) endorsement deadline — roughly one week after the supervisor deadline, for the Eligible Research Body’s Vice-President/Dean of Research (or nominee) to formally endorse the application.
Call outcome — announced several months later (end of April in the 2026 cycle).
Award start date — 1 September following the outcome announcement, with limited flexibility (e.g. an extension to no earlier than 1 March of the following year) if transcript verification is delayed.

Practical steps for an applicant:

Contact a proposed primary supervisor directly and discuss the project before starting an application — Research Ireland does not help applicants find a supervisor.
Complete the preliminary eligibility quiz on Research Ireland’s online system to unlock the application form (this does not confirm eligibility).
Prepare the application within the stated word limits, consult your host institution’s Research Office early, and note any Research Office–internal deadline, which is commonly set ahead of Research Ireland’s own deadline.
Ensure the primary supervisor submits their endorsement form by the supervisor deadline.
Confirm the Research Office submits its institutional endorsement by the final deadline.

Applications are deemed ineligible — and any offer withdrawn, even after conditional acceptance — for reasons including: missing or mismatched supervisor details, incomplete forms, exceeding word limits, inclusion of unrequested material (including links to online research profiles), plagiarism or excessive duplication across applications, a research project already funded in full or in part elsewhere, or false/unverifiable information.

How Applications Are Reviewed

Research Ireland uses a two-tier international peer review process, run separately for STEM and AHSS streams:

An outer international assessment board evaluates each application remotely, with at least two independent international reviewers per application, producing an initial merit ranking.
Top-ranked applications proceed to an inner international assessment board, assessed by two further independent international reviewers and discussed at a stream-specific panel meeting, which determines the final quantitative ranking and recommendation to Research Ireland.
The process is gender-blind: applicant name, date of birth, and gender are withheld from reviewers, and applicants and supervisors are asked to avoid gendered language and pronouns in application text.

Applications are scored against four weighted headings:

Applicant — 40%: track record and research potential, quality and significance of achievements, personal statement, fit between applicant profile and proposed project, evidence of independent thinking, and quality of the supervisor’s reference.
Project — 40%: clarity and coherence of the proposed research, quality of design and methodology, feasibility of milestones and contingency plans, contribution to advancing the state of the art, dissemination plans, and treatment of relevant ethical and sex/gender-dimension considerations.
Training and Career Development — 10%: clarity and quality of the training/career development plan, potential to build transferable skills (including for careers outside academia), and clarity about the scholarship’s expected career impact.
Environment — 10%: suitability of the supervisor(s), quality of host-institution infrastructure and facilities, and fit between applicant, supervisor, and host institution.

Research Ireland funds down the ranked list until the available budget is exhausted; ties are broken first on Project score, then Applicant, then Training and Career Development, then Environment. Feedback to unsuccessful applicants is limited to the numerical score assigned — Research Ireland does not provide qualitative feedback or enter correspondence about individual assessments.

Strategic Funding Partner Themes

Alongside the core, discipline-agnostic GOIPG programme, Research Ireland partners with other state bodies to fund themed variants of the scholarship, using the same value, duration, and review structure described above. In the 2026 call these were the Environmental Protection Agency (environmental policy–relevant research), the Department of Children, Disability and Equality (a scholarship on childhood disadvantage in Ireland), Met Éireann (weather and climate research themes), and the Department of Foreign Affairs (the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship in Conflict Resolution). Applicants may apply to one theme only; if an application submitted under a partner theme is not judged aligned with that theme, it is automatically considered instead under the core programme. Partner themes and their thematic priorities change from call to call, so check the current call document for which partners are participating in a given year.

Terms of the Award

Award terms documented in Research Ireland’s General Terms and Conditions and the individual Letter of Offer include, among others:

The scholar (Lead Investigator) must be a registered full-time student at the host Research Body, not a full-time employee of that body or any other organisation, and must maintain a physical presence at the host institution and Irish residency within reasonable travelling distance.
No public announcement of the award may be made before Research Ireland’s own official announcement.
Funder acknowledgement of Research Ireland (and any strategic funding partner) is required in all resulting publicity and outputs.
Limited additional duties (teaching, tutoring, demonstration work) are permitted with supervisor permission where consistent with the training and career development plan and reported in progress reports; no part of the stipend is treated as remuneration for such work.
The grant may be held alongside limited additional external funding (travel bursaries, equipment grants, small awards) subject to prior Research Ireland approval and several conditions, including that Research Ireland remains recognised as the primary funder.
Intellectual property arising from the research is managed by the host Research Body in line with Ireland’s national RDI Framework and National IP Protocol.
Research Ireland is a signatory of DORA and a member of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), and expects assessment of scholars’ work to avoid reliance on journal-based metrics such as impact factor; applicants without an ORCID iD are asked to register one before applying.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship the same as an IRC scholarship?

Functionally yes. GOIPG is the scheme the former Irish Research Council originated and ran under this name; since the August 2024 merger it is administered by Research Ireland, but the scheme name, structure, and all-disciplines scope have carried over largely unchanged. See CASRAI’s IRC funding overview for the fuller picture of which other IRC-heritage schemes are still running.

Can a taught master’s degree be funded under GOIPG?

No. The scheme funds master’s degrees by research, not taught master’s programmes, and applicants for the master’s route must not already hold any kind of master’s degree, taught or research.

Does GOIPG cover non-EU tuition fees in full?

Not necessarily. The standard fees contribution is capped at €5,750 per year (with up to an extra €4,000 per year available specifically for non-EU nationals in the 2026 call). Any remaining gap between that contribution and actual non-EU fees is the responsibility of the scholar and/or host institution.

What happens if my primary supervisor is already supporting another GOIPG applicant this year?

Both applications will be deemed ineligible. A primary supervisor may endorse only one GOIPG application per call round (this restriction does not apply to supervisors continuing to support scholars from earlier call rounds, or to secondary/co-supervisor roles).

Where do I find the exact deadlines for the current call?

Directly on researchireland.ie’s funding-opportunities listing and the current year’s GOIPG call document — dates, values, and even some eligibility details are set fresh each call and should not be assumed to match a prior year’s call.

Related CASRAI Resources

Irish Research Council (IRC) Funding: A Guide for Researchers — the wider status of all IRC-heritage schemes under Research Ireland.
Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann): The Merged SFI + IRC Funding Agency — the 2024 merger, governance, and full funding portfolio.
UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship — a comparable national individual-researcher award scheme, for cross-system comparison.
Horizon Europe and EU Research Funding: An Overview — relevant for GOIPG scholars considering EU-level funding beyond the scholarship.
Grants Management & Research Funding — the full topic cluster.