Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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246. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he has sought, or will seek, clarification from Research Ireland regarding the rationale behind the decision to discontinue the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme and move to a block-grant funding model administered through higher education institutions; and the specific protections that will be put in place for the cohort of PhD researchers who would previously have been funded under the scheme, particularly in relation to maintaining consistent, well-funded stipends, ensuring access to leave entitlements and other rights currently provided under Research Ireland’s HR policies, and safeguarding consistent national standards for postgraduate researcher support. [29089/26]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 246 and 255 together.

Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland published its first strategy in March of this year. One of the key actions within the strategy is to review and improve existing Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland PhD-funding programmes in partnership with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the research community. The goal is to develop an enhanced suite of PhD programmes with the ambition to make Ireland the leading location in Europe for PhD training.

This improvement to programme design and delivery further complements the work of my Department in recent years to secure a substantial increase to the PhD stipend level for Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland funded students from an historic baseline of €16,000 to €25,000. This represents an increase of over 50% in funding to an individual student, impacting on the approximately 3,800 Research Ireland funded PhD students through the Government of Ireland Programmes, Centres for Research Training, large scale Research Centres, and initiatives such as the Investigator and Pathway programmes.

I wish to be clear that there are no plans to reduce this funding level for Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland funded PhD students, nor to reduce the number of individual PhD students in receipt of its supports.

Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland are engaging in ongoing consultation with individual researchers, HEI Research and Innovation leadership, and wider stakeholders, on possible changes to the current model in operation with regard to the Government of Ireland Programme, with the intention of improving programme design and delivery, and the impact of this funding.

These proposed changes are aligned with commitments to the research community to increase stability and predictability through annual and regular calls, and to streamline and simplify the Agency's programme offering. Indeed, an indicative programme plan was published by Taighde Éireann on 21 April as part of this move towards greater predictability in the availability of funding opportunities under the agency.

My department will be working with Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland as this programme development continues, to ensure that Ireland remains competitive and to bring additional PhD-training capacity into the system over the lifetime of the strategy, to meet the needs of our researchers, our society, and the economy.