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Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities debate -
Wednesday, 28 Jun 1978

Health and Safety at Work.

The second draft report from the Social Affairs Sub-Committee deals with the Community's action programme on safety and health at work. This is a very important general action programme which would have very considerable implications for Ireland and which the Sub-Committee viewed as an overall programme which will lead to a number of detailed proposals which the Joint Committee would have a further opportunity of examining. However, we felt it was very important to look at the framework, at the priorities and the standards being set in the overall programme with a view to seeing what was the Irish position. Then we anticipate seeing more specific proposals in due course. This was the main focus of our report.

The Commission have put forward this long, detailed general programme and again have asked that the Council take a decision on the proposed programme by the end of this year. I understand that the Minister for Labour has sought a copy of this draft report, knowing that it was coming before the Joint Committee this afternoon, because he is attending a meeting in Brussels at which decisions may be made on this Community programme and he was anxious to have the views of the Joint Committee. For once we are in time with our report, if only just, to be helpful in whatever discussions are taking place at the European Community level.

Paragraph 4 summarises the thrust of the proposed programme. It says that the stated objectives of the proposed programme are (a) the improvement of the working situation with a view to increased safety and with due regard to health requirements in the organisation of the work, (b) the improvement of knowledge in order to identify and assess risks and perfect prevention and control needs and (c) the improvement of human attitudes in order to promote and develop safety and health consciousness. The Commission then in that context have proposed several initiatives that we set out: first of all, incorporating safety aspects into the design, production and operation of places of work, machinery, equipment and so on; secondly, determining the exposure limits for workers of pollutants and harmful substances present or likely to be present at work; thirdly, monitoring workers' health and safety more extensively; fourthly, inquiring into the causes of acidents and diseases and assessing the risks connected with work. Then co-ordinating and promoting research on occupational health and safety and, lastly, developing health and safety consciousness by education and training. There is therefore an aspect of looking at questions of design and places of work, the safety of equipment. There is the question of exposure limits, the question of better knowledge about pollutants and harmful substances, the positive approach of monitoring workers' health and safety. There is a research element of inquiring into causes of accidents and diseases, inquiring into occupational health and safety and finally there is the whole element of education and training. Clearly this would form a series of specific directives on other measures, and also activity which would not require directives but would be more a co-ordination of what was happening in the different member states.

Paragraph 5 looks at the implications for Ireland and we note that if the draft programme is accepted by the Council we can expect various specific proposals to emanate from the Commission, and we will have an opportunity of looking at these. We are informed that some of these will be binding directives and others will be other kinds of measures.

At paragraph 7 we note that there is already a considerable body of legislation dealing with the occupational safety, health and welfare of workers mainly in industry which is administered by the Department of Labour, and that machinery is already there for adapting existing legislation to comply with any Community legislation that may emerge. Apart from regulations under the European Communities Act, 1972 there is provision in the Safety in Industry Bill, 1978 enabling the Minister for Labour to amend existing legislation by order so as to comply with any international obligations.

We note at paragraph 8 that the initiatives proposed in the draft programme, aiming at the development in the medium and the long term, of safety and health consciousness would be of interest also to the Department of Education and that this would require the basic principles of safety and health education to be taught in schools. We also consulted and obtained the views of the Department of Agriculture on the question of safety at work in agriculture.

Paragraph 10 summarises the views of the bodies consulted. The Federated Union of Employers consider that the contents of the draft programme are in general acceptable. They point to the rather wide scope and general proposals in the programme and they say that more specific comment can only be made when there are more specific recommendations, regulations or directives. The Irish Farmers' Association express their full support for the Community's efforts in making work on farms safer, and they approve the efforts being made to improve tractor and machinery design with a view to making such machinery safer to operate. I found that the Association had not completely concluded their examination of what might be some of the most specific proposals to emerge.

Mr. Donal O'Sullivan of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union expressed wholehearted support for the proposed programme, and saw it as a very welcome programme because it was an overall programme related to research and educational aspects of health and safety at work; he believed that in many aspects other member states are in advance of the position in Ireland and that this would be a stimulus to introducing more monitoring here and better emphasis on the health and environment of the worker.

At paragraph 13 we say that the Joint Committee regards the proposed Community programme as an excellent framework within which the better protection of workers can be pursued. As the least industrially advanced of the Member States Ireland has the opportunity of ensuring that in newly established industries the highest standards in the matter of safety and health are adopted from the outset. The standards which will be more readily accepted are those that are the product of wide-ranging research and have the support of internationally acknowledged experts. The proposed programme should help to achieve that objective if it is adopted. This is extremely important in view of the kind of industry we are tending to attract to Ireland, in view of the comparative advantage of developing later than some of the other Member States, and having the benefit perhaps of learning from their experience.

At paragraph 14 the Joint Committee welcomes the emphasis placed on the proposed programme on the need for incorporating safety aspects in the design of work places, machinery, equipment and plant, and commends the stress placed on health at work, an aspect which could perhaps be given more attention here. There was an indication from those who submitted evidence to us, that there was more evidence of concern about safety at work than about monitoring workers' health This was an aspect on which the programme has laid very strong emphasis and we have much to gain from that. In the Committee's view there is need not merely for ensuring that proper standards are prescribed but for regular monitoring of workers' health to ensure the adequacy of those standards. The promotion of health and safety consciousness is one of the necessary ingredients of the programme and in the Committee's view training programmes should be expected to contribute to this task.

Since the programme is a general one ranging over a very wide field, there would presumably be a need, if this programme is adopted by the Council of Ministers, to establish priorities and to set a time scale for the implementation of the various measures. We felt that it would be appropriate for us to try to set within that very general programme some of the priorities we saw and these are set out in paragraph 15. We would like to see some priority given to the action proposed in relation to noise and vibration control, harmonisation of permissible levels of exposure to toxic substances or physically harmful substances, carcinogens, toxicological evaluation and monitoring of workers' safety and health. We had set our general priorities in the programme, and this was an attempt to be more specific in the kind of directives or regulations we would like to see coming out of this overall programme.

In paragraph 16 we record our acknowledgements and thanks to the Federated Union of Employers, the Irish Farmers' Association and Mr. Donal O'Sullivan of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union.

One of the points mentioned is the question of the importance of design at the very initial stage in relation to the development of a business or an industry, especially in relation to the industrial relations ultimately within that industry. Getting in at the design stage to ensure that safety and health in the work environment are catered for was stressed very much by the Committee as one of the valuable concepts in the measure.

The question of the cost of machinery fitted with safety devices was also mentioned. Very often such machinery is sold without the safety devices and then subsequently when the appropriate safety device is fitted one finds that the output is reduced by 30 per cent. Apparently, this is quite a common occurrence and is something to be guarded against. Some concern was expressed in sub-committee about the question of monitoring the health of employees on a continuous basis in relation to privacy, confidentiality and the use to which such information could be put in due course. It sounds a very laudable idea to monitor health in the event of any occupational disease developing but at the same time it would give management a fairly thorough breakdown on the health of the individual, which could lead to earlier redundancy in certain cases.

Two things struck me about the report. One was that at the moment our regulations and laws are probably as advanced as those of many other European countries. The Safety in Industry Bill probably goes a long way towards having better provisions for safety in industry, but in the draft report a lot of things like determining the exposure limits for workers to pollutants and other harmful substances and monitoring workers' health and safety more extensively are mentioned. Is it the intention of the Commission to require each country have certain bodies such as the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, bodies like that, or is it intended to give grants to industry to set up their own departments? With the advanced technology now coming on the market, with new firms starting up nobody really knows, except possibly the firms themselves, whether or not a lot of things are harmful. Is it intended that there be a central policing authority to do it in each country? My view is that it would be better to have a central EEC policing authority that we could draw on, a body of information, regarding all industries setting a uniform standard throughout the Community. It strikes me that the cost of a lot of these very laudable objectives on either individual States, if they were to do it for each industry, or individual firms, would be colossal.

If I might answer just part of that question—because it is a very complex one—there are various aspects of this programme to which we have referred in the report. First of all, there is considerable emphasis on the need for better research. To some extent, Ireland would benefit from research being carried out into various pollutants, tolerance levels and so on. Some of that would probably be carried out in Ireland by appropriate research institutions, as other kinds of research are carried out in other areas. To a certain extent the committee envisages that there will be specific proposals, probably in the form of a directive, laying down minimum standards that the Member States must satisfy. Then Ireland would perhaps have to bring in legislation or perhaps regulations in the area of, for example, the health of workers, more monitoring of health, more safeguards ensuring the health of workers. That would be that specific area. Then there are other matters which relate to training, where it is more likely that the Commission, in a recommendation, would try to reinforce whatever emphasis was being placed anyway in the member states on safety and health consciousness as an aspect of the general training of workers. This would be a matter, for example, in our context for AnCO to ensure that in the training programme sufficient emphasis was placed on health and safety at work.

The point about this report and the particular programme is that it is a very general framework concerning the health and safety of workers. To a certain extent, it probably would have been outside the terms of reference of the previous Joint Committee because it had only power to look at the more specific proposals, one by one, as they came up. The impression of the members of the sub-committee—I do not know whether Deputy Woods would share this view—was that the fact that there was a general overall programme of related concerns and priorities was regarded as helpful by the people who saw this draft programme. There were parts of it where Ireland would be as advanced as other member states but, in others—like health and monitoring of health and research—we would have a lot to gain from this integrated approach to the health and safety of workers. We were conscious—again we mention this in our draft report—that, as a country that is developing later, that is attracting, for example, chemical companies, textile companies, we have an urgent need to ensure a healthy environment for workers, and that we have the benefit of the most advanced research into pollutants or into dangerous substances. There is no way in which this programme can be implemented either by policing tightly at an overall Community level or necessarily by legislative instruments. It is going to be a whole series of different kinds of proposals. But, to some extent, there will be directives which will require us to change our law or to improve our standards. So far as there is research going on it is envisaged that some of that research will be carried on in Ireland but for the benefit of the whole Community.

May I have a proposer for the adoption of the report?

I propose its adoption.

I second that proposal.

Paragraphs 1 to 16, inclusive, agreed to.

Draft Report agreed to.

Ordered: To report accordingly.

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