In January 2026, the Irish Marie Skłodowska-Curie Office (IMSCO) transferred into Research Ireland. The IMSCO houses the National Delegate and National Contact Point for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), as well as the National Contact Point for the European Research Council (Social Sciences and Humanities) and the Global Challenge Cluster 2 (Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society) – all funding schemes under Horizon Europe. The Office provides critical support and advice to Irish applicants from across the spectrum of sectors and subject areas.
The MSCA has long been a major source of research and innovation funding in Ireland, across all disciplines of research, with one of the highest drawdown rates per capita in Europe. Under Horizon Europe to date, Ireland has secured over €135 million, representing 3.46% of the available EU-wide MSCA programme budget, the highest share across the Horizon Europe programme areas. Irish SSH researchers have secured over €92 million in funding from the ERC under Horizon Europe, and approximately €25 million has been awarded to Irish partners under Cluster 2.
All three of these funding programmes offer unique strategic benefits to Ireland. With a focus on bottom-up, excellent research, the MSCA fund innovative research training projects, involving career development and knowledge-exchange opportunities through international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary mobility of researchers, to better prepare them to address current and future societal challenges. These research and innovation activities, and importantly the world-class researchers attracted to Ireland supported by the MSCA, greatly contribute to a vibrant, broad-based research base in Ireland, boosting jobs, growth and investment.
The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for frontier research, funding highly creative researchers of any nationality across different career stages. As an excellence-driven programme, the ERC provides critical funding for fundamental research in Ireland. Meanwhile, Cluster 2 supports inter-sectoral cross-European consortia to address challenges pertaining to democratic governance, cultural heritage and the creative economy, as well as social and economic transformations.
The IMSCO was previously housed within the Irish Universities Association (IUA) and operated under a partnership with the Irish Research Council. The IMSCO’s move to Research Ireland follows significant success over two decades at the IUA, supporting Irish researchers, universities, businesses, and wider Irish society.