Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 June 2019
288. Deputy Niall Collins asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation further to Parliamentary Questions Nos. 255 and 256 of 9 February 2017 (details supplied), the number of such inspections carried out by the authority in 2017 and 2018, respectively, for the same equipment. [25371/19]
View answerAs outlined in my reply to a recent Parliamentary Question No. 381 of 11 June 2019 the role of the Health and Safety Authority in relation to funfairs arises in the context of their overall legislative remit on workplace health and safety and the protection of workers at work.
In this regard the Health and Safety Authority carried out eighteen (18) inspections from 2011 to date 2019 and the breakdown of those inspections can be seen in the following table.
The findings of these inspections led to 6 formal investigations taking place, 4 instances when verbal advice was provided, 13 instances of written advice and an improvement notice was issued in 1 instance.
The figures supplied include all inspections/investigations under the NACE Code (European industrial activity classification) which includes activities of amusement parks and theme parks. This classification includes parks which may be temporary in nature and have many “various types of funfair equipment/activities".
|
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
|
|
Inspections |
2 |
2 |
0 |
6 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
|
Investigations |
1 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
|
Verbal Advice |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
Written Advice |
2 |
1 |
0 |
6 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
0 |
|
Improvement Notice |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
The answer to Parliamentary Questions Nos. 255 and 256 in February 2017 detailed the number of workplace inspections that included some health and safety aspects of equipment at funfairs as part of the overall workplace inspection. These details are set out in the following table for ease of reference with updated information added. It should be noted that these inspections were not stand-alone inspections of fairground and funfair equipment as this is not within the remit of the Health and Safety Authority but were normal workplace inspections.
Workplace inspections that covered some health and safety aspects of equipment at funfairs as part of the overall workplace inspection 2011-2019
|
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
|
1 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
Responsibility for the licensing and operation of funfairs is a policy matter for Housing, Planning and Local Government as the existing legislation dealing with licensing of funfairs, the duties on organisers of funfairs, and the owners of fairground equipment, in the context of public safety, is covered by the Planning and Development Act 2000.
