Research ethics committee

What is HSE's Research Ethics Commitee (REC) set up to do?

HSE's Research Ethics Committee (REC) is responsible for the ethical conduct of research studies designed to increase understanding of workplace factors that contribute to ill health and workplace accidents. It will be of interest not only to those conducting research, but also to those involved in field investigation or promoting health and safety outside HSE.

Research protocols that are submitted to REC for clearance are those involving human subjects, whether individuals at work or healthy volunteers, which could present any physical or psychological risk or discomfort or invasion of privacy.

Any research activity involving intrusive questioning and/or the collection of confidential personal data is of interest to the Committee. Without Committee clearance any such investigation should not go ahead.

See our terms of reference.

Purpose

The Committee - its role and responsibilities are to:

Protect the dignity, rights, safety and well being of those individuals who are subject of HSE's field, laboratory and epidemiological research.

Ensure that HSE/HSL has the independent scrutiny it needs to deliver ethical research in accordance with Government guidelines. See Ethical Assurance for Social Research in Government.

Involve itself solely with human volunteer and intramural HSE research and is not a replacement for NHS Research Committees where that might be appropriate, with the following exceptions - when and where the research:

• organisation does not have access to a local ethics committee
• activity is multi-centre (and it is not appropriate to involve NHS Multi-centre REC)
• topic falls outside of the technical experience of a local committee (eg hygiene based research)