Mr. Michael Horgan:

The BeSMART project has been very successful to date. This online tool, which is based on e-learning technology, helps small businesses to complete risk assessments and produce safety statements by guiding them through the process in a very intuitive way. Approximately 30,000 companies have registered for and used the BeSMART service to date. The number of hits on the BeSMART website is much larger. We are trying to encourage more and more companies to use this service as it develops. We believe BeSMART can be used as a tool to enable a different kind of approach to workplace inspections to be taken.

The point I was making in my initial statement about the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was that we have lost specialist staff - engineers and toxicologists - to the private sector. Although we have done everything that has been asked of us in terms of numbers, etc., under the employment control framework, we have not been able to get permission to replace those people or train others to take up those positions. I referred to the need for "leadership and smart thinking" because the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has been doing a great job on the macroeconomic issues but, in my opinion, needs to make difficult decisions on certain micro issues. Public service organisations that need particular resources which are not available elsewhere in the system are falling through the cracks because of the specialist nature of their work.

I will give some examples of areas in which the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform needs to show leadership and make difficult decisions, even if it might be criticised in some quarters for doing so. Additional resources might be needed for a number of projects in areas like information and communications technology and nanotechnology. To give an example that does not relate to technology, Dublin City Council is planning to build a long sea outfall tunnel, but we do not have the in-house expertise to provide services in that regard. That is an example of an issue in respect of which we need the Department to show "leadership and smart thinking".

The number of inspections carried out by the authority this year is likely to be approximately 10,000. There has been a significant decrease over the years. The figure probably exceeded 15,000 in 2008 and 2009. The number of inspections has decreased because our numbers have dropped by approximately 20%. Our people numbers have probably dropped by approximately 30%. There continues to be a risk basis to our inspections. The algorithm we use internally to identify areas for inspection focuses on high-risk areas. Low-risk areas tend not to be inspected, or are inspected on foot of a random audit.

While the number is important, most of our inspections at this stage result in advice and guidance. It is almost a consultancy-type meeting. We would like to look at smarter ways of doing that. We have started to look at whether there are other ways we can change the culture within enterprises and agriculture to get those numbers down. The number of fatalities seem to be stuck at about the 45% to 50% mark no matter how much effort we put into them. It is not acceptable that we resign ourselves to that. We need to come up with smarter ways to get the culture to change and to get people to realise the risks they are taking. Yes, we are down but we think we are still making the impact we have always made.