We are pleased to have been invited. I am accompanied by Ms Mary Dorgan, head of provincial services, and Mr. Robert Roe, who is in charge of policy and technical guidance. We have circulated some written information for the assistance of the committee and I will outline the highlights.
The Health and Safety Authority is established under statute and reports to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Deputy Killeen is the Minister of State to whom we report. Our tripartite board is chaired by Jim Lyons and is made up of three employer nominees, three union nominees and five ministerial nominees.
Our role covers the promotion of accident prevention, education and training, and enforcement. We provide information and advice, craft legislation for consideration by the Oireachtas and are involved in research. The HSA is also the competent body, nominated on behalf of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, to sit on EU committees and working groups. It represents Ireland at the Health and Safety Agency in Bilbao and is also a member of the senior labour inspectorate in Europe. It has a budget of €20.9 million this year. It has a number of offices around the country and hopes to open the Kilkenny office on 14 July as an interim move pending the full decentralisation of the authority to Thomastown.
Our strategy has two main principles, prevention and enforcement. In the next couple of weeks, we will publish a new strategy to take us forward for the next three years. If the strategy is to be a reality, every CEO and managing director will be required to make it a measurable priority, just as they do in respect of finance or other parts of their business.
Our mission is to promote a culture of safety which every citizen can embrace. The occurrence of any injury or accident at work, which could otherwise be avoided, must become as socially unacceptable as driving a car while drunk, dangerous driving or smoking in an enclosed workplace. We estimate that workplace injuries and accidents cost our economy approximately €3 billion in any one year, or approximately 2.5% of GNP. Current statistics show that employees in agriculture, construction, mines and quarries are particularly at risk. Equally, those working with vehicles and involved in manual handling are in the high-risk category. The most common causes of accidents or injuries in Irish workplaces are slips, trips, falls and poor lifting habits. The authority is also involved in occupational health and will soon publish an occupational health strategy for consultation and adoption towards the end of the year.
We are very understanding of the complexity of doing business in Ireland. We want to ensure we are fully in tune with the pressures on employers and employees. The last thing we want is for people to get bogged down in bureaucracy associated with health and safety. We are therefore working across all sectors to simplify the major issues into understandable contexts, starting with agriculture, construction and mines and quarries.
We believe fundamentally in meaningful consultation and a partnership approach. We work closely and continuously with the social partners, representative bodies, State agencies and major corporations to promote appropriate thinking on safety, health and welfare throughout the economy. This has led to highly beneficial partnerships with organisations such as ESB Networks, with which we already have a strategic alliance. We also co-operate with insurance companies to provide advice, assistance and support in their sector. We have a valued relationship with our colleagues in the HSENI in Northern Ireland and those in the rest of the United Kingdom. We meet regularly at both executive and board levels.
Wherever the preventive approach fails, we will use our full powers, including legal action, to protect workers and enforce safety and welfare regulations in the workplace. If any individuals, companies or sectors choose to disregard safety considerations, they should be rightly punished for this.
We want to raise the general level of awareness of safety and health in the workplace. We will target future workers and managers by working through the national education and training systems. We want to make relevant information and guidance easily available and we will continue to identify and address the high-risk sectors. We will enforce the law fully.
A couple of significant questions were posed in correspondence from the committee. The first concerned the number of accidents occurring. Most incidents do not result in fatalities but may result in injury. CSO figures indicate that there were 117,300 cases of work-related illness in 2004. Of these, more than 45,000 resulted in absences from work for more than three days. This is regrettable.
The number of work-related fatalities last year was shocking, amounting to 73. The last year in which so many died was 1995, in which year there were 78 fatalities. Last year's figure of 73 contrasts totally with that of 2004 when 50 people lost their lives. This was the lowest number of deaths since 1979.
The fatality rate dropped by more than 25% over the past decade. If it had not dropped, the total number of deaths in 2005 would have reached 89. The fall in rates has been achieved against a background of increasingly complex employment, which has increased by 50% since 1995. There has been a large increase in the number of higher-risk construction workers, in the order of 250%. The employment of non-Irish workers has also increased to very high levels. Regrettably, these are all factors that have tended to increase the number of fatal injuries.
The authority is mindful that the trend of reductions being achieved needs to continue and that there is no room for complacency in this regard. One injury, or one death, is one to many. To date, a total of 22 fatalities have been reported to the authority. This contrasts with 23 fatalities for the same period in 2004 and 29 for the same period in 2005.
Members asked about the nationalities of those killed or injured. The workplace fatality rate in the new entrant EU states is approximately double that of the original EU 15. In Ireland during 2005, a total of nine non-Irish workers died in workplace related incidents. Of these, six were from other EU states and three were from outside the EU. Non-Irish workers in the construction industry are three times more likely to be killed at work than Irish workers.
Members asked about the number of inspections we carry out. The number of inspections carried out by the authority increased from 10,704 in 2003 to 13,549 in 2005. We have a target of 16,000 inspections this year. Inspectors have a wide range of powers and they issue improvement notices, directions and compliance orders. Fifty per cent of all inspections result in enforcement action or the issuing of advice notice requiring remedial action. The failure to comply is an offence.
In the high-risk sectors of construction, the authority carried out 6,203 inspections in 2005. Last year more than 50,000 planning permissions were granted. Of these, 33,000 were for new construction and approximately one in five sites granted permission was inspected by the authority. In the agriculture sector, in which 114,000 people were employed last year, 1,187 inspections were carried out by the authority's inspectors.
Last year we pursued 40 prosecutions through the courts resulting in those convicted being fined a total of more than €460,000. In recent years a single company was fined €1 million following its prosecution by the authority. The Act of 2005 sets a maximum penalty of €3 million per breach, or imprisonment. The Judiciary is taking a dim view of these cases and cases are regularly referred to the higher courts because of the serious manner in which judges regard breaches of health and safety regulations.
Our goal is to reduce accidents to a level where we are on a par with the best EU states. Obviously, we wish to go beyond that. These states include the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark. Were Ireland to achieve a fatality rate equivalent to the United Kingdom, the total number of fatalities would have been less than 20 last year. We face a significant challenge in that regard.
Other relevant issues of note relate to the specific regulations we are drafting under the new Act in terms of quarries, construction, working at height; reporting accidents to us — which is a legal obligation that can be fulfilled on-line to speed up the process — and provision for young workers in particular going into the working environment for the first time. The result will be that a series of modern regulations dealing with all aspects of workplace health and safety will be in place this year. All sectors of the economy must be encouraged to support these regulations.
We have significant new powers concerning on-the-spot fines and testing for intoxicants. In particular we want to bring in the code of practice for the self-employed and those employing fewer than three people, which allows them comply with the law in a less stringent way than bigger companies in terms of paperwork.
There are specific duties for directors also. Already, we have a better response from people in charge of organisations to the management of safety standards within their enterprises. For example, the authority has recently partnered with every county manager and they have committed, with us, to putting in place an integrated health and safety management system within the next two years. That will mean where they offer contracts to sub-contractors, they will have to adhere to the highest safety standards.
In its third interim report, the committee referred to the voluntary protection programme. We see that as a significant move, which we are developing. Also, we can publish lists of offenders. Recently, the Government gave us responsibility for a significant initiative in the REACH directive, which is for the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals. We were approved for 44 additional staff and already we have recruited an assistant chief executive, Sharon McGuinness, and 11 staff. By the end of the year we will have recruited 22 staff in this area. Those are jobs for university graduates, many of them educated to Ph.D level. We are also involved in the global harmonisation system for chemicals.
On micro-businesses, of which the committee is aware and has written about, there are approximately 113,000 businesses in Ireland that employ fewer than ten people. Those businesses are a backbone of the economy. We have done research to determine their needs. We have reviewed the existing publications and will come back with some specific proposals targeted at prevention and enforcement for this sector. Specifically, we will ensure that literature can be easily understood. Already, we have developed a mentoring programme for small business and we are investigating the possibility of Internet based training for micro-business. We will have further co-operation with the insurance sector in that regard.
We have established a workplace contact unit which allows us to be contacted easily but, more importantly, allows us to quickly respond to issues raised with us by either workers or members of the public. We have a special investigations unit and legal counsel to help us with our legal workload and the investigation of cases.
The final area the committee asked us to examine was the level of financial resources. In recent years, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has provided adequate funding to enable the authority carry out increased numbers of inspections and significant promotional campaigns as outlined in our annual programme of work.
Given the restrictions on staffing levels faced by all public bodies, the authority has had to reorganise its operations to achieve greater efficiency and so enable it to carry out active programmes in high risk sectors while maintaining a presence in all other sectors.
The authority is a modern, lean and highly efficient organisation. Our staff members in particular have been highly responsive to this change and they have worked hard to ensure that the required structures are in place to fulfil our role.
The committee asked if we had some recommendations to make. We believe the insurance companies should reward good workplace health and safety practices by means of a verifiable and robust system to be worked out with industry. We are prepared to play our part in that regard. The voluntary recognition schemes also have a role to play in this regard, where companies pursue excellence in health and safety and are independently verified. Small companies must have health and safety statements in place and all companies must have named people who are responsible for health and safety. This could also be incentivised by the insurance industry. The insurance industry should provide greater support in the promotion of workplace health and safety.
Ireland requires a national culture of workplace safety and health. For our part, the authority is fully committed to achieving that. It is up to everyone in society and the economy to buy into this agenda and make it happen. I will be happy to take any questions from members.
