Mr. Martin O'Halloran:

I will try to touch on some key observations, as the WRC did, and will take our statement as read.

Established in 1989, the Health and Safety Authority is the national statutory body with responsibility for enforcing occupational safety and health law, promoting and encouraging accident prevention, and providing information, advice and promoting education on safety and health for all companies, organisations and individuals. We advise the Minister on the making of legislation and regulations in this area and represent Irish interests at EU committees dealing with proposed directives and regulations.

In 2014 the authority took responsibility for the Irish National Accreditation board which is there to promote and foster best practice in business. The authority has a very broad scope. Anywhere in the economy that work happens, we have an involvement. Everything from agriculture, construction, diving, docks, forestry, education, fishing, health care, manufacturing, mines and quarries, public sector, transport and storage, chemical manufacturing, import and formulation, and control of major accident hazards. We are also the agency responsible for accompanying UN international chemical weapons inspectors. Our remit is extremely broad.

Like other public sector organisations, the authority has experienced a reduction of available resource since 2008. Notwithstanding that the authority’s approach is a risk-based model where we identify those areas where we have a legal mandate, where we carry risk profiling where the need is greatest and where our interventions can have the maximum impact. That is the model we have evolved.

The authority believes it is critically important that we work collaboratively with other organisations, and the working group on the task force of fishing is a case in point. We are a regulator and inspectorate and our regulatory remit touches and overlaps with other organisations. Our philosophy is that we engage with them. We have more than 25 service level agreements and memorandums of understanding, and are fundamentally a creature of collaboration. We feel that by sharing information and experience, we individually and collectively can deliver a better result for the workers of Ireland.

Since the establishment of the authority in 1989 the overall workplace fatality rate has been driven down from 4.9 per 100,000 workers in employment 1990 to just over 2 fatalities per 100,000 workers today. Ireland can take some level of satisfaction that we have achieved a reduction in fatalities. Our approach is to create a culture of safety which is how we believe we can achieve the best sustained improvement. A single entity cannot deliver everything. It requires a sustained, collaborative effort among all in the marine sector to achieve the improvement in the sector.

The Health and Safety Authority’s priority is to ensure that workplace injuries and fatalities are minimised through the work of our inspectorate and our advice, information and guidance. We also provide tools to all sectors of industry to make it easier for them.

On the marine sector and fishing, fishing vessels that come within the legislation enforced by the authority since the Safety Health and Welfare Work Act 1989. Under the Safety Health and Welfare Work Act 2005 a vessel is defined as a place of work and falls clearly in the scope of that legislation. The 2005 Act also interprets share fisherman as an employee of the owner or the skipper of a fishing vessel. Therefore, if they are a share worker, the duty of care to their workplace safety and health is extended fully to them.

My submission to the committee includes some information on awareness raising which I will take as read but I will give a sense of the partnership working. As stated earlier the authority has long recognised the need and values of a partnership approach to bringing about change. This approach relies on the commitment of the regulator together with stakeholders working to a common aim and with an agreed set of objectives to bring about improvements in the workplace. One key example of this from the authority’s perspective is the construction safety partnership advisory committee, where, through working collaboratively with all players, namely, the regulators, industry players, employers, the employee groups, we have achieved a common approach to drive down accident rates. In addition, as a regulator, the authority has acknowledged the potential overlap of regulatory bodies and their engagement with different sectors. The Health and Safety Authority therefore was a committed participant in the joint ministerial task force on fishing which we felt was a very progressive development, and is a signatory to the memorandum of understanding. What that means on the ground is that if one of our inspectors goes into a workplace and sees something which is not directly within our mandate or remit, we have a one-on-one relationship and the inspector can say that he or she is not competent to deal with the matter but knows someone who is. It is a very pragmatic, sensible working arrangement on the ground.

The HSA’s programme for work in 2017 has identified 50 specific fishing inspections. The focus of these inspections was on the management of health and safety of all crew on the vessel with particular reference to the presence of safety statements and risk assessments. These are the mandatory requirements under the 2005 Act. It is essentially a safety management system. To assist in that, we have prepared guidance, which is in the awareness raising, that helps make it easy for the skipper to discharge. This was distributed widely.

The 2017 inspection programme has to date resulted in 46 inspections, or 92% of programme. Based on these inspections 52% of vessels inspected had a safety statement and risk assessment in place. That does not sound terribly high but it is something of an improving trend.

The 2005 Act is applicable irrespective of vessel size and while no specific focus on vessel size was applied in the current programme, just over 60% of the vessels inspected were in excess of 15 m, so they would have been in the scope of the EEA programme. Inspections have taken place in different locations around the country including Howth, Dunmore East, Kilmore Quay, Cahirciveen and Castletownbere.

A number of issues were identified. Our approach is to identify and address these with the duty holder, in this case, the skipper or the owner and if he or she is willing to voluntarily agree compliance then we use that approach before we implement the regulatory legal enforcement instruments. The issues identified included the absence on a safety statement, the risk assessment, training, understanding of English by non-Irish national crew members, and emergency plans. During that programme it was interesting to note that the nationalities identified included Lithuanian, Polish, Egyptian, Czech Republic, Rumanian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Philippine and Indonesian, which I do not believe is an exhaustive list, but it includes both EEA and non-EEA members, the latter being Egyptian, Ukrainian, Philippine and Indonesian.

The presence of personal flotation devices was observed on all inspections. That is positive from our perspective.

In regard to the vessels where a health and safety management system was absent or inadequate enforcement action was taken by inspectors in the form of written advice or issuing of formal enforcement notices. Some 60% of the vessels has such enforcement actions taken.

We found there was a broad awareness among skippers of the role of the Health and Safety Authority. However, there was some confusion flagged to our inspectors in relation to the respective roles of the HSA and the Marine Survey Office. We would stress that the role of the authority is around worker safety and workplace safety practices, as in identification and risk assessment or, in other words, work practices rather than the architecture or construction of the vessel.