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2009

20th Anniversary of Health and Safety Act

Date Released: 29 Oct 2009

Sunday, November 1, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989.  The Act ensured that, for the first time in Ireland, occupational safety and health legislation covered 100% of workers and of workplaces. Prior to this only an estimated 20% of workers were covered, mainly in factories, construction, mines & quarries, etc.

The same date also marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Health and Safety Authority (HSA). According to SIPTU Health and Safety Advisor, Sylvester Cronin, the anniversary is significant but, he warned, there is still an ‘unacceptably high rate’ of deaths in Irish workplaces.

“It is right that we should mark this occasion. Unfortunately, there is very little cause for celebration as workers continue to be killed in Irish workplaces at an unacceptably high rate. In the past 20 years, more than 1,200 workers have been killed needlessly inside Irish workplaces as a result of preventable accidents,” Sylvester Cronin said.

“Some international bodies, such as the ILO and European Agency for Safety and Health at Work have estimated that the overall levels of worker-deaths are many multiples higher when work-related illnesses and diseases are taken into account,” he said.

For 2001, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated in a report “Decent Work – Safe Work” that the annual work-related mortality in Ireland was 1,298.  For 2003, the European Agency for Occupational Safety and Health produced figures that indicated that the work-related mortality in Ireland was 1,413.

“If these figures are representative of the real situation relating to occupational safety and health we are possibly looking at a total of somewhere in excess of 21,000 work-related deaths in Ireland over the last 20 years,” Sylvester Cronin said.

“The cornerstone of preventing these massive work-related deaths is to have effective written risk assessments, as is the legal obligation in Ireland and throughout the European Union,” he said.

“It is almost self-evident that employers are not carrying out their legal obligations. Instead, within the EU, there are efforts afoot to reduce this legal obligation to carry out ‘life and limb’ saving written risk assessments.  There is no case, business, social or moral, to reduce the requirements for written risk assessments.”

“SIPTU calls on the Irish Government and MEP’s to resist and oppose such a move at European level,” he said.





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