The Global Talent Ireland initiative opened for applications on Friday. We spoke to Minister James Lawless, TD, the driving force behind the push to bring world-class researchers to Ireland.
In January 2025 Minister James Lawless took over his portfolio at the newly created Department for Higher and Further Education, Research, Innovation and Science. It seemed like a good match indeed, with his eclectic background that includes a primary degree in maths and physics, a master’s in computer science, a stint in the high-tech industry, and qualifying for the Bar. It’s a department of Government that Lawless once recommended should be created, and one he clearly relishes leading.
On Thursday, he launched Global Talent Ireland, a push to attract rising stars and research leaders and their teams to Ireland, run by Research Ireland. We sat down with him today to get a better sense of the thinking behind the initiative and the breadth of its ambition, as well as his own vision for his department.
“I’m really excited about my new mission in the Department of Higher Education and Further Education Research and Science,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done and I’m really up for it. I’m honoured to be able to lead the department that I envisaged from opposition.”
He sees our research and innovation sector as an economic enabler, and our talent as our key natural resource. “What is our value-add? It is our talent, it is our innovation, it is our entrepreneurial spirit, and it’s putting all that together with advanced research and new ideas. It is the power of ideas that has powered our economy.”
Lawless recognises that some of the investment into that research and innovation economy fell away in the days after the last crash, and he is now pushing to “refresh and recharge” that investment. He knows there will be no shortage of competition for funding as the Government announces a prioritisation of investment into infrastructure, but he would argue that it is the knowledge economy that will ultimately pay for these investments.
As part of these efforts he secured new funding for the Global Talent Ireland initiative which hopes to take advantage of a moment in history when many academics are on the move or considering a move.
Designed to support the recruitment of both mid-career rising stars and established research leaders, the Global Talent Ireland programme will provide the resources needed to establish or relocate world-class research teams in Ireland, and it will fund research across all disciplines under Research Ireland’s remit, “with a focus on strategic areas of importance to Ireland”.
The call went live on the morning of 18 July, with an information webinar planned for 1 August. Expressions of interest are due by 28 August, 2025, with a full proposal deadline of October 2025, followed by a rigorous peer review and interview process.
It will not have been lost on the Government that just this weekend the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the US became the latest agency to announce major cuts, including shuttering its scientific research arm, although Lawless emphasises that he expects the talent to come from all over the world, and indeed from our own diaspora, something we have previously done quite successfully.
What would success look like? “Success can be many facets, but certainly a very important part of that success is getting the right people here as soon as possible and getting them started,” he says, adding that the initiative hopes to initially attract 45 such researchers to Ireland in the next three years, and support them to grow here. Should that prove to be successful “the sky is the limit” he says. And how will we measure the success of the initiative?
“You can measure things like citations and publications and that’s certainly a very useful metric and certainly you want that,” says Minister Lawless. “But also economic impact, and societal impact.
“I believe this can turbocharge our economy, and produce the resources that will solve our housing challenge, for example, through urban density research, or solve our climate challenge through the likes of flood mapping, or cure infectious diseases. I hope people will say ‘sign me up, that’s something I can support’. It’s important that that message resonate with our people as well.”
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