This paper aims to explore how Irish higher education institutions can organise themselves to unlock the potential of research on policy-making. It describes work underway in Maynooth University, sets out the emergence of brokerage arrangements to support the impact of research on policy in a national policy context and explores some international research findings in relation to brokerage and related activities. It also identifies and seeks to describe some particular brokerage arrangements established by individual higher education institutions, as well as some established by a number of higher education institutions in partnership sometimes with Governments. The aim is to seek to support the emerging discussion about these issues. This paper is intended to be read in conjunction with two other pieces of work being advanced by the authors. Following a series of eight ‘open discussion meetings’ which were organised on a cross-disciplinary basis in Maynooth University (April to June 2023) to secure a better understanding, from the perspective of staff, of what Maynooth University might do next to help researchers unlock the full value of their work for public policy, they drafted a discussion paper to put some shape on and to place on the record the views which colleagues articulated during these meetings. This record was tested and further considered in two briefing and refinement meetings with the original participants and other interested colleagues, which took place September and October 2023, and it is planned to publish an updated paper in the near future. They are also finalising a related paper on how innovation and research for policy support each other.