The universities, their associated colleges and the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland have been working together on the implementation of the National Framework of Qualifications since its establishment in 2003. Largely, the universities have worked centrally with the Qualifications Authority, through the universities registrars group and the Irish Universities Association (IUA) regarding Framework matters. This has been very effective in reaching high-level agreement on direction, and in ensuring that a consistent approach to the implementation of the Framework has been put in place.

In the light of the advances made, and following discussions with the IUA executive and the registrars of the universities, it was considered that the most effective way of building on this progress in a more detailed manner was to establish a 'network', consisting of members of each university and associated college. As a result, nominations to the network were sought from each university and associated college and the inaugural meeting of the network, named the University Framework Implementation Network, was held on 12 December 2007.