The Irish Research Managers and Professionals Association (IRMPA) has launched as a national voice for Ireland's research management profession, a development that matters to institute professionals as it fills a representation gap that has persisted since the profession was first formally identified as lacking one in 2022. IRMPA serves research managers and administrators across universities, technological higher education institutions, research performing organisations and research centres nationally.

IRMPA is a not for profit community dedicated to research management and administration professionals across Ireland, providing visibility, professional development and a collective voice for a profession spanning the full research ecosystem.

The launch responds to a structural gap between Ireland's expanding research funding and the administrative profession managing it, rather than a routine networking initiative.

Academic analysis of the profession noted as recently as 2022 that Irish research management and administration remained "without a local voice," despite growing rapidly since the mid-1990s alongside successive increases in research funding, according to Emerald Insight. That funding scale has continued to accelerate: the Irish government announced a 460 million euro investment in seven new Research Ireland centres in June 2026, supporting 577 research positions and more than 800 PhDs across 17 research performing organisations, according to Research Ireland.

IRMPA already collaborates with the All-Island Research Excellence Network and the Northern Ireland Research Professionals Network, and has engaged with peer bodies including Denmark's national research managers association on shared practice around research policy and digital transformation.

For the sector, formalising a national association gives a previously informal professional community a single channel through which to engage funders and policy makers as investment scales. For the sector's research performing organisations specifically, a recognised professional body offers a mechanism for standardising skills and career pathways that individual institutions cannot build alone.

Whether IRMPA secures a seat at the policy table commensurate with the funding scale it now supports will be the clearer test of the association's first years, more than its formal launch itself.

Source: Teagasc / Emerald Insight / Research Ireland