The Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI) was an

Irish Government The Government of Ireland () is the executive authority of Ireland, headed by the , the head of government. The government – also known as the cabinet – is composed of ministers, each of whom must be a member of the , which consists of ...

programme that provided integrated financial support for research. It was administered by the

Higher Education Authority __NOTOC__ The Higher Education Authority (HEA), officially An tÚdarás um Ard-Oideachas, is the statutory body providing policy advice for higher education in Ireland. Description and functions The HEA was established under the Higher Educati ...

(HEA).

History and funding

The programme was launched in 1998, a "quantum leap to help create a

knowledge economy The knowledge economy, or knowledge-based economy, is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is based principally on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to advancement in technical and scientific innovation. ...

" attributed to the vision of Irish-American businessman

Chuck Feeney Charles Francis Feeney (April 23, 1931 – October 9, 2023) was an Irish-American businessman and philanthropist who made his fortune as a co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group, the travel retailer of luxury products based in Hong Kong. He wa ...

, founding chair of

Atlantic Philanthropies The Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) was a private foundation created in 1982 by American businessman Chuck Feeney. The Atlantic Philanthropies focused its giving on health, social, and politically left-leaning public policy causes in Australia, Berm ...

. Atlantic and the government developed the plan for the funding model, and the first funding under the scheme was awarded in 1999. There were thereafter five cycles of funding, with the fifth commencing in 2010. From 2000 to 2006 PRTLI was funded under the National Development Plan 2000-2006, with assistance from the

European Regional Development Fund The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is one of the European Structural and Investment Funds allocated by the European Union. Its purpose is to transfer money from richer regions (not countries), and invest it in the infrastructure and se ...

, and with some private sponsorship from philanthropic organisations, including

. In 2004, an assessment of the programme concluded that it was meeting its objectives. The funding allocation under PRTLI Cycle 4 commenced in 2007. Approximately €230 million was allocated for major research initiatives in fifteen

higher education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

institutions. This funding provided for workspace and researcher funding. Cycle 5 of PRTLI funding was announced in 2010, involving €277m of state expenditure, and a further €59m of private investment. Through the five cycles, Atlantic contributed €178 million, which was around 16 per cent of the more than €1.1 billion funding to 2015. Cycle 5 was completed by May 2018, when an additional €14.3m was allocated to PRTLI, to be used in part to help pay off outstanding bills for Cycle 5 projects. The successor to PRTLI, intended to support new investment in research infrastructure, was then being scoped and planned by "Innovation 2020", a new government strategy for research and innovation, but its form had not yet been decided. By 2021, PRTLI was apparently no longer operational, but was regarded as having been successful.

Description

PRTLI was a programme run by the Irish Government that provided integrated financial support for research for institutional strategies, programmes and infrastructure and ensured that institutions had the capacity and incentives to formulate and implement research strategies, which would give them critical mass and world level capacity in key areas of research. The programme supported

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

and

social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

, such as

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

and

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

. It was managed by the HEA on behalf of the Minister for Education and Science and the Government. The PRTLI awards were evaluated by an international panel of assessors.

Objectives

In general the objectives of the programme were:

Applications

The compilation of the data for

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, a global database of

algae Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...

species, was funded by PRTLI 2, 3 and 4 programmes, to the Ryan Institute at the

National University of Ireland The National University of Ireland (NUI) () is a federal university system of ''constituent universities'' (previously called '' constituent colleges'') and ''recognised colleges'' set up under the Irish Universities Act 1908, and signifi ...

. Cycle 3 funded the Biosolids Research Programme at Sligo Institute of Technology.

Impact and legacy

A 2004 assessment concluded that "there is clear evidence that PRTLI has changed institutional thinking and has brought about an extraordinary transformation in the way third level institutions undertake research". Don Thornhill, former secretary general of the Department of Education and Science (1993-1998) and former chair of the HEA (1998-2005), later wrote:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Programme For Research In Third Level Institutions Educational organisations based in Ireland 1998 establishments in Ireland