Dr. Sharon McGuinness:

I thank the Senator for his comments. To be clear, the amendment was driven primarily at the time by the low numbers of accidents reported. There are two separate issues because we were looking not only at the accident reporting but equally at the reporting of occupational illness. As for occupational illness, as I think I said earlier, there was no defined list of occupational illnesses either in European or national legislation and, therefore, it was felt there was a challenge. As part of the regulatory impact analysis, which was considered by the board at the time, it was felt that it was not clear-cut that an employer would be able to identify with any degree of certainty what an occupational illness was. Very often an occupational illness, and indeed illness or disease more generally, is referred back to the causative agent. That can be a chemical or biological agent or whatever, which is why something like the biological agents regulation is important. It identifies the causative agent of the disease rather than the disease itself. It therefore protects the worker from the agent itself in the first instance in order that no disease is caused in that regard.