The Irish Research Council (IRC) was, until 2024, Ireland’s national funding body for individual-investigator research awards across all disciplines — postgraduate scholarships, postdoctoral fellowships, and a set of smaller discipline-agnostic schemes. On 1 August 2024, the IRC merged with Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) to form Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann), and the IRC as a legally separate body no longer exists. This page does not re-tell that merger story in detail — see the Research Ireland guide for the legislative background and organisational structure. What follows here is narrower and more practical: what the IRC’s own schemes were called, which of them are still running under the Research Ireland umbrella, which have closed permanently, and how a researcher navigating IRC-branded funding today should actually go about it.
What the IRC Was, Briefly
The Irish Research Council traced its roots to 2012, when two predecessor councils — the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) — were merged into a single body. That merger already established the IRC’s defining feature relative to its sister agency SFI: the IRC funded individual researchers and their proposed projects across every discipline, from archaeology to zoology, through open, investigator-led, internationally peer-reviewed competitions, rather than funding STEM-focused research centres or industry partnerships the way SFI did. That all-disciplines, individual-award model is the part of the IRC’s identity that carried over most directly into Research Ireland’s current postgraduate and postdoctoral schemes.
The IRC Today: A Legacy Brand, Not a Legal Entity
As of the 2024 merger, “Irish Research Council” is no longer the name of an operating funding agency — it is a legacy brand attached to a set of schemes that Research Ireland inherited and, in most cases, continues to run under their original names. This distinction matters practically for two reasons:
- The domain split. The historical IRC website, research.ie, still exists but is now presented as an archive: it hosts historical programme documents and past-call materials, and it directs visitors to researchireland.ie for any current funding opportunity. If a scheme’s guidelines or call documents on research.ie look outdated, that is expected — the live version, if the scheme still runs, is on researchireland.ie.
- Scheme names mostly survived the merger, funding decisions didn’t move. Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship, and several smaller IRC-heritage schemes are still administered under those names by Research Ireland. What changed is the parent organisation, governance structure, and (per the Research Ireland guide) the funding source — not, in most cases, the scheme brand itself.
IRC-Heritage Schemes and Their Current Status
Scheme status changes with each annual call cycle, so treat the table below as a snapshot rather than a permanent record, and confirm the live status on researchireland.ie’s funding-opportunities listing before relying on it for a deadline. As of this writing, research.ie itself groups its inherited programmes into three categories: schemes with an open call, schemes that are between calls (closed for the current round but expected to recur), and schemes that have been permanently discontinued.
| Scheme | Status (per Research Ireland) | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme (GOIPG) | Recurring annual call, currently between rounds | Individual, all-disciplines PhD/master’s research funding, awarded for 1–4 years depending on stage and route. |
| Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme | Recurring annual call, currently between rounds | Individual postdoctoral awards, 12–24 months, for researchers establishing independence across all disciplines. |
| Starting and Consolidator Laureate Awards Programme | Recurring, currently between rounds | Early-to-mid-career investigator-led awards, run jointly with SFI even before the merger. |
| Advanced Laureate Awards Programme | Recurring, currently between rounds | Senior investigator-led awards for ambitious, higher-risk research programmes. |
| New Foundations | Recurring, currently between rounds | Smaller seed-style awards, historically used to build capacity toward a larger application (e.g. Horizon Europe). |
| COALESCE Research Fund | Recurring, currently between rounds | Collaborative scheme linking Irish researchers with EU Cost Actions and other European networks. |
| SFI-IRC Pathway Programme | Closed call | A joint SFI/IRC early-career scheme that predated the 2024 merger and foreshadowed it. |
| Ulysses (France-Ireland) | Closed call | Bilateral travel/networking grant supporting collaboration between Irish and French researchers. |
| Research Ireland Supplemental Grant for Displaced Researchers – Ukraine | Open | Supplemental support for researchers displaced by the war in Ukraine hosted at Irish institutions. |
| Enterprise Partnership Scheme (Postgraduate & Postdoctoral) | Permanently closed | Formerly co-funded awards with an industry partner; not accepting new applications. |
| Employment-Based Postgraduate Programme | Permanently closed | Formerly funded PhD research embedded with an employer partner; discontinued. |
| CHIST-ERA | Permanently closed | Former ERA-NET co-fund programme in ICT-adjacent research; concluded. |
A scheme marked “closed call” or “currently between rounds” above is not necessarily gone — most of the IRC’s flagship individual-award schemes (GOIPG, the postdoctoral fellowship, the Laureate Awards, New Foundations, COALESCE) have run annually for years and are administered on a predictable, recurring cycle, typically with a call opening and an application deadline in the autumn. “Permanently closed” is a distinct, explicit designation Research Ireland itself uses for schemes it has decided not to reopen — treat that distinction as meaningful rather than assuming every closed listing means the scheme is gone.
How to Apply for an IRC-Heritage Scheme Today
The mechanics of applying have not changed substantially from the pre-merger IRC process:
- Start at researchireland.ie, not research.ie. The live funding page is the authoritative source for whether a given scheme’s call is currently open, what the deadline is, and which version of the guidelines document applies to the current round.
- Eligibility runs through an eligible research body, not directly through Research Ireland. As with the pre-merger IRC, postgraduate and postdoctoral applicants apply to be hosted at an eligible Irish research-performing institution (a university, institute of technology, or other approved research body), and that institution’s research office is typically involved in eligibility checks, costing, and submission.
- Review is by international, independent peer review. IRC-heritage individual-award schemes have historically used external, discipline-matched peer reviewers rather than in-house panels, and Research Ireland has continued that model for these schemes — a relevant point for researchers estimating turnaround time or preparing a reviewer-facing proposal.
- All disciplines are eligible, including arts, humanities, and social sciences. This is the single most consequential inherited feature for prospective applicants: unlike much of the former-SFI portfolio, the IRC-heritage individual-award schemes remain open to every discipline, not just STEM fields.
- Check your host institution’s internal deadline separately. Irish research offices commonly set an internal review/sign-off deadline in advance of Research Ireland’s own application deadline — confirm this locally rather than assuming the published call deadline is the only one that applies to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Irish Research Council still around?
Not as a separate legal entity. It was formally dissolved on 31 July 2024 and merged into Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann) the following day. “Irish Research Council” and “IRC” persist as informal, widely used labels for the individual-award schemes it originated, which Research Ireland now administers.
Is research.ie still a working website?
Yes, but it now functions as a historical archive of past IRC programme documents rather than the live funding portal. Current calls, deadlines, and guidelines are published on researchireland.ie.
Do I still apply “to the IRC”?
No — applications for IRC-heritage schemes are now submitted through Research Ireland’s systems and reviewed under Research Ireland’s governance, even where the scheme retains its original IRC-era name, such as the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship.
Which IRC schemes are gone for good?
Research Ireland explicitly designates some former IRC schemes as permanently closed rather than simply between calls — among them the Enterprise Partnership Scheme (Postgraduate and Postdoctoral), the Employment-Based Postgraduate Programme, and CHIST-ERA. Do not assume a scheme in this category will reopen; check the live listing rather than relying on older guidance documents.
Are IRC-heritage schemes still open to all disciplines?
Yes. This is the defining feature the IRC brought into Research Ireland: schemes such as the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship and Postdoctoral Fellowship remain open to applicants across the humanities, social sciences, and STEM, unlike much of the former-SFI portfolio, which is more STEM- and industry-weighted.
Related CASRAI Resources
- Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann): The Merged SFI + IRC Funding Agency — the merger history, legislative background, and full organisational structure.
- ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche): France’s Research Funding Agency — a comparable national funding-council profile.
- UKRI Funding: How UK Research and Innovation Works — a comparable multi-council merger, for context on how national funding consolidations play out administratively.
- Horizon Europe and EU Research Funding: An Overview — relevant for Irish researchers building toward EU-level funding, which several IRC-heritage seed schemes (New Foundations, COALESCE) are explicitly designed to support.
- Grants Management & Research Funding — the full topic cluster.
