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Ethics

It is the applicant's responsibility to identify any potential ethical issue, to handle the ethical aspects of the proposal and to detail how these aspects will be addressed. Please refer to the H2020 guidance document on completing ethics self-assessment for further information.

Research must comply with the ethical principles of Horizon 2020 as outlined in Regulation (EU) No 1291/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013 establishing Horizon 2020 and in the model grant agreement. In particular, applicants submitting research proposals for funding to Research Leaders 2025 should demonstrate proactively that they are aware of, and will comply with, European and national legislation and fundamental ethical principles, including those reflected in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; the European Convention on Human Rights and its Supplementary Protocols; the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the National Policy Statement on Ensuring Research Integrity in Ireland. We do not expect any applications to involve research on human stem cells, as this falls outside of the remit of the programme in food and agriculture research.If such an application is received, it will be subject to ethical review and will have to comply with Irish laws on this matter. Such research would have to be approved by the REA, in writing, in advance of the award commencing.

Ethics Review Procedure:

The top ranked proposals will be submitting to the Teagasc Ethics Committee for two-stage ethics review procedure. This is based on the Horizon 2020 ethics review. During the evaluation process, expert evaluators will be encouraged to flag any issues that they think need to be considered during the ethics review procedure.

Stage 1 Ethics screening: The first step will flag any issues that have not been raised in the Ethics Issues Table or by the reviewers and assess whether these and the issues that have been already flagged have been adequately addressed. If the proposal raises serious or complex ethics issues, it will move to the second step - Ethics Assessment (i.e. more in-depth analysis).

Stage 2 Ethics Assessment: Where necessary, the Teagasc Research Ethics Committee will seek advice from appropriately qualified experts outside of the committee.

Outcome: The outcome of the process will be formulated in an ethics report with an ethics opinion, which can be ethics clearance, conditional ethics clearance or ethics refusal. Proposals that receive conditional ethics clearance will have to confirm that they will meet the conditionality requirements a all appropriate times before commencement and during the research project. Proposals that are refused ethical approval will not proceed.