Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. Will representatives of workers be involved in the review? I heard the Minister of State list the stakeholders but I did not hear worker representatives on it. If they are not involved in the review, I urge the Minister of State as a matter of priority to ensure they are.

I note the Minister of State's concern for workers with regard to any responsibility that might be placed on them but their representative body, and a fine representative body it is too, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, wrote to the previous Minister to outline that the workers are more than happy to undertake that responsibility. If a person acquires an injury or illness in the workplace it should be notifiable to the Health and Safety Authority. It beggars belief. I actually did not believe it when I read the correspondence first that it was not notifiable to the Health and Safety Authority. For some people, putting themselves in the way of this disease is part of their job. It is part of their work and it is in the transaction of that work that they acquire it. It is not good enough to say we might not be able to determine exactly how people acquired it. That is what the Health and Safety Authority inspectors are there to do. They can come in and investigate how it happened. The Covid committee has heard at length how it runs through workplaces in particular settings. We know we have unusually high rates of infection among healthcare workers, which is very worrying. What we need now is to give the HSA the authority to do what it should be doing and inspecting these workplaces. However, in order to do this they have to be notified.

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