The director of the statutory body that funds research in the humanities will meet officials in the Department of Education and Science later this month to seek a substantially increased budget.
The Government's Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, launched on Sunday, includes increased support for humanities research.
In particular, it indicated the need to increase the output of PhD graduates and post-doctorates from a current 187 to at least 315 by 2013.
The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) is the statutory body formed in 2000 to support humanities research across a wide range of areas, and the council expects to see a marked increase in its budget, according to its director, Dipti Pandya.
"We know there is an increase, the exact amount I am not fully aware of," she said yesterday.
While the IRCHSS welcomed the strategy and the additional research funding for science, she said funding for humanities research "is not in the same league at all", despite its significance to the general public.
For example, the council had funded research into the impact on Irish society of an ageing population, which could help inform Government policy.
Its 2005 budget, which funds research for this year, amounted to between €8 million and €9 million, said Ms Pandya.
With this, the council funded 135 projects, including postgraduate scholarships, senior research fellowships and post-doctoral researches.
"We could easily fund another 50 per cent. It is not as though we have any difficulty finding projects to fund," she said.
The strategy makes limited reference to humanities research, although at the launch the Ministers for Education and Enterprise both made reference to the need to support humanities and social science research.
The strategy says this is founded in a belief "in the intrinsic value of scholarship". It also says there are "compelling social and economic reasons" to develop our capabilities in the humanities and social sciences.
The Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association yesterday welcomed the strategy, saying pharmaceutical R&D would benefit patients and the economy.
