Praise for HSA
The release of the Strategy Statement 2013-15 of the Irish Health and Safety Authority (HSA) has been greeted positively by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the experts in health and safety policy at Safety-Link Consulting (http://www.safety-linkhealth.com) report.
IOSH expressed hopes that occupational fatalities, especially in agriculture and the fishing industry, would be reduced as a result of the implementation of the three-year strategy, which has promised the promotion of risk management education for students as well as the maintenance of the current level of construction inspections.
Michelle Peate-Morgan, IOSH Ireland Branch Chair, commented: “The HSA performs a vital social and economic role for Ireland, delivering health and safety regulation, protection, improvement and education. And with around 1,800 members working across all sectors in Ireland, IOSH is pleased to contribute to the achievement of the strategy vision.”
She said that the new three-year strategy of the HSA was welcomed by IOSH, as was a comment by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton that health and safety was central to successful enterprise. She described as “worrying” the agriculture and fishing deaths in Ireland over the last few years, but suggested that the new strategy could be helpful in reducing the number of workplace fatalities.
Peate-Morgan stated that the HSA and IOSH had in common a concern about health and safety being constantly trivialised and negatively portrayed, “as it undermines the real and very serious aim of saving lives.” According to the report, inadequate safety policies and procedures and other health and safety failures in Ireland resulted in the loss of over a million work days and €3.2 billion for the country’s economy in 2010. She said that this highlighted the soundness of the business case for good health and safety, in addition to “the compelling legal and moral argument”.
Sadly, it’s true that fatalities and serious injuries as a result of inadequate compliance with health and safety legislation remain all too common in Ireland, across such industries as construction, health care, security, retail, engineering and manufacturing. That is why Safety-Link Consulting (http://www.safetylink-health.com) is committed to providing vital services, like workplace surveys, for small to medium sized companies that lack their own full time Risk Manager.
