The Government’s 2002 National Spatial Strategy and the regional development strategy within the National Development Plan 2007-13 both emphasise the need for coherent, coordinated frameworks to achieve economic growth, social cohesion and balanced regional development.

In order to create a coherent, coordinated framework of access to higher education, to enhance progression through and mobility across programmes and institutions, to ensure the highest possible quality of learning, and to contribute to the generation of internationally competitive research to underpin the future competitiveness of Ireland’s economy, all four universities in the Dublin city region (DCU, NUIM, TCD and UCD) along with Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and the three Institutes of Technology (IADT, ITB and ITT) have agreed to establish a major new network, the Dublin Region Higher Education Alliance (DRHEA)

The rationale for establishing the Alliance is to further strengthen the contribution which the higher education sector is making to the establishment of the Dublin city-region as an internationally recognized centre of knowledge creation and innovation.  

In particular the Alliance will provide a structure through which

• The impact of the SIF on higher education in the Dublin region can be maximized,
• Strategic priorities and supporting collaborative actions can be agreed and implemented,
• More efficient dissemination and sharing of the outcomes from SIF Projects can be facilitated through an enhancement via networks of the social capital component of the regions higher education system.

For this round of the Strategic Innovation Fund the eight members of the Alliance have identified four strands of activity where there is an immediate need for resources to enable collaborative actions:

Enhancement of Learning
Graduate Education
Internationalisation
Widening Participation