Shifting the Light: Reframing Research Ethical Approval through Participatory Practice in Irish Higher Education

Participatory Action Research (PAR) emphasises collaboration with people with lived experience.  In academia, PAR studies must secure research approval from an ethics committee. Research ethics committees (RECs) are higher education institutional bodies responsible for reviewing research proposals to ensure they meet ethical and legal standards to protect research participants. RECs require researchers to complete a formal research ethics application (REA) to obtain approval before commencing a study.  Current research ethics approval processes in Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEI), which are universities, colleges and institutes providing higher level education and research, often exclude community researchers at the REA stage. This exclusion raises critical questions about power, ownership, moral values, and knowledge creation. Principle-based ethics rooted in biomedical traditions are deeply embedded in the research world and prioritises protection and risk avoidance over inclusive practice, failing to support the relational, inclusive, and dynamic nature of PAR. REA is more than administrative paperwork ensuring ethical compliance; it is the foundation for research integrity. When community researchers are excluded from this foundation, the research process begins with inequality and exclusion. As a result, the ethical foundation for participatory research is weak. This study asks: How can community researchers be included in South East Technological University’s (SETU) research ethics application process? Through critical reflection on practice and literature, this issue in practice leads to a challenge within existing frameworks; namely in considering who is protected, and who decides these ethical guidelines. If ethics frameworks are to uphold justice, they must evolve beyond compliance -based protectionism and instead enable shared ownership, respect, and inclusion from the outset.By reframing RECs not as gatekeepers, but as enablers of transformative, co-created knowledge, this study contributes to a broader movement for more inclusive, participatory, and socially just research ethics practices. It calls for empowering community researchers as equal partners from research origin to conclusion and challenges the academic community to rethink what constitutes ethical, inclusive research.