Mr. Martin O'Halloran:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to come and meet with it. As the Chairman pointed out, I am accompanied today by my colleagues, Mr. Brian Higgisson, assistant chief executive, and Mr. Pat Griffin, senior inspector. We have prepared a submission which I do not propose to go through in detail but rather will give a quick overview of some of the main elements within it. We are very happy to deal with questions on any aspects of that detail.

To provide some context, I note that the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, was established in 1989 under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989. Ours is the primary organisation charged with advancing workplace safety in Ireland and we have an extremely broad remit extending to environmental matters, market surveillance, machinery and all sectors of the economy. On the dissolution of Forfás in August 2014 with the integration of some of its functions into the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, the Irish National Accreditation Board was integrated with the HSA. The scope of our role is that we have workplace safety and health responsibility for the 1.93 million people in employment but also through the environmental dimension of our work for the 4.6 million people in the State. I have set out in the written submission some of the areas our remit covers. In essence, it is all sectors of the economy and all areas of activity ranging from the self-employed through to the 1,000 employee-plus multinational corporations.

Like every other State organisation during recent years, the HSA has had resource reductions of the order of 24% in staffing and 26% in budget. That appears to be stabilised in 2015, which is a positive note. Notwithstanding the overall diminution in resources, we have increased and maintained the level of resource allocation for agriculture safety. Currently, in excess of 20% of our total resource is allocated to improving farming safety and health for a workforce representing approximately 6% of employment nationally. Resources are allocated on the basis of a legal mandate, which means there are certain tasks and activities which we are legally mandated to carry out and in respect of which we have absolutely no discretion. These include Seveso control of major accident hazards as well as risk profiling by sector and risk profiling by industry with subdivisions within that. We also look at the impact an intervention may have and try to achieve the greatest impact with our resources.

Our policy is to change culture. We try to create culture change in all sectors of the economy. I point members to page 6 of our submission on which there is a graph showing that the efforts of the authority and other players have been very successful since our establishment. Ireland has gone from having approximately six deaths per 100,000 in employment down to a current figure in the region of 2.1 deaths. Overall, we have seen a very positive reduction in fatalities. This reduction in fatalities has been accompanied by a comparable reduction in the level of accident reporting and the economic impacts. However, I now turn to the agriculture sector.

In marked contrast to the story we can relay in relation to the economy in general, the situation in agriculture is not positive. It has not been possible so far to achieve the level of sustained improvement we strive for. While there have been improvements, they have not been sustained. In 2014, 30 fatalities out of the 55 reported were in agriculture. In the ten-year period 2005 to 2010, there were 193 farm fatalities which was an average of approximately 19 per year. That gives a rate of 16 fatalities per 100,000 workers in the farming sector. The rate for 2013 was 59.9 compared with 2.9 across the general working population. This means that a person working in agriculture is approximately eight times more likely to be killed in a workplace accident than a person working in the economy generally.

While Ireland has made very significant progress when one looks at the European comparators, we take the view that one death is too many. Based on the investigations of inspectors of these fatalities, inspections on farms and of serious accidents, the vast majority of fatal accidents can be characterised as foreseeable and preventable. We reiterate that primary responsibility resides with the legal duty holder, in this case the farmer, and we work to support them in that.

Progress has been made in other sectors through achieving a culture change and helping people to understand the right behaviours through the level of awareness. Our approach is to bring about a culture change and this is what will deliver a sustained improvement in farm safety standards.

Bringing about change cannot be achieved by one entity alone. Therefore, our approach has been to work collaboratively. We have bilateral working arrangements with Teagasc and the farming representative organisations. In 2002 we established a farm safety partnership advisory committee which meets a number of times a year. More significantly, a farm safety action plan has been put together. There are five specific goals which have been translated into a series of projects on which specific groups are working.

We also use education, and have interventions at primary, secondary and tertiary level. We provide online educational supports through our website, hsalearning.ie. We provide farm talks and farm walks, conferences and seminars. In one appendix I have outlined some of the indicative activities which take place in the authority. We support other organisations. The experience we have in terms of giving advice and the conduct of inspections or farm safety visits is that they are well received and farmers are generally willing to put in place the recommendations of the inspectors.

There have been a number of occasions when the authority has found it necessary to use the formal enforcement instruments, and generally they are complied with by farmers. We also have communications channels on the HSA YouTube channel where we have survivor stories. We have extensive guidance on a vast range of activities on our website and provide an online tool to help farmers prepare safety statements and identify hazards. Those tools are available free of charge. We work collaboratively, particularly with Teagasc, to ensure that anyone going on to a farm is, to some extent, able to assist in the dialogue.

I will give a flavour of the kind of work we are doing and go through some of the key elements listed on page 12 of our plan for 2015. Our programme of work for 2015 will continue with the same broad approach and themes as have been adopted through 2013 to 2015. Once again, we will work closely with the farm safety partnership advisory committee and the key players. We will run an inspection programme of 2,300 inspections, which is the opening plan. Our plans for inspections are based on a planned proactive element and a reactive element, which is based on notifications of serious accidents and, tragically and regrettably, where fatal accidents have been reported.

The briefing session is taking place today. We are working with Teagasc on how we will roll out the discussion groups. We plan to have involvement with 50 discussion groups or, as they are also known, knowledge transfer groups. They operate on the principle of peer to peer influence and have been used internationally and in Ireland to achieve behavioural change in a number of aspects of farming practice. There is quite a level of academic research in the area which is published, peer reviewed and challenged to show that, as a technique, they are quite efficacious. That is the major shift in the mix of elements.

We will also have significant awareness raising campaigns through print, radio and digital media, and through points of assembly for farmers such as marts and co-ops. We will work with key players in the farming media. We will have the survivor stories on the HSA YouTube channel. People who have had experiences will tell their stories, which are quite powerful. We will have continuous messaging through social media. We will implement the farm safety partnership action plan. As I said, we will work collaboratively with Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on quite a number of initiatives, including close collaboration on discussion groups. We may come back to the Department, which will strongly support the discussion groups.

We will collaborate with our colleagues in Northern Ireland on some all-island initiatives because its experience is very similar. It has a similar profile.

We will carry out market surveillance on the supply chain and products used in agriculture, and we will continue to ensure that, as best we can, the products being used in the agriculture industry are safe and compliant with the appropriate testing and marking.

We will have a HSA marquee and staff presence at the ploughing championships. Typically, of the 150,000 or more people who pass through a very significant portion of the farming community gets advice and information on safety practices. It also includes live demos on PTOs, chainsaws, quad bikes, animal handling and a number of other areas. We will develop a new, free online tool linked to our BeSMART tool. We currently have more than 20,000 registered users and we will make it available free online to the agricultural community later this year.

We will have a national farm safety conference with other players. We will have seminars and presentations to agricultural stakeholders, some of which are planned. We receive numerous requests from farming organisations to speak at meetings, and we will continue that role. We will also have awareness raising material including videos and posters at assembly points for farmers. As I mentioned, we also have a website. We will also continue to monitor and engage with European and international peer groups in identifying the best practices.

We believe that this programme will ensure continued high levels of awareness. The levels of awareness, we believe, are very high, based on European agency research. We want to keep it high but also we want to drive and encourage the behavioural change that will lead to improvements. Ireland can produce world class food on farms, but we want to see world class products produced on world class safety farms.

I can reassure the committee that the level of resources allocated by the Health and Safety Authority will continue to be maintained during 2015. I thank members for the attention. We will happy to deal with any questions.