Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Polish ambassador to the House and wish to mark International Poetry Day. Today is also international Workers' Memorial Day. It was a privilege to attend the event organised this morning by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, IBEC, the Construction Industry Federation and other employers, in conjunction with the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, to mark the lives lost in workplace accidents. Some 481 workers have lost their lives over the past decade in workplace accidents. In the first few months of 2022 alone, seven lives have been lost. While we have decent health and safety legislation in this country, deaths are still happening within workplaces, deaths that are completely unnecessary and should never have happened. That is because of laziness and a disregard for regulations.

While we know that farming and agriculture is the sector with the highest number of workplace fatalities, there are also very serious issues in construction, in particular in smaller companies and self-employed tradespeople. We have had a number of fatalities in ports and docks in the past year. SIPTU has called for the HSA to inspect the ports and docks sector on a much more frequent and aggressive basis. Of course, workplace accidents are not the only source of death arising from a person's workplace. We know that occupational illnesses are a significant and growing source of workplace death. It is incumbent on all employers to make sure that as many measures as possible are taken to protect workers.

There were reports earlier this week that senior management within the HSE is attempting to prevent the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, from engaging with local disability managers. That is absolute madness. I am well able to be critical of Ministers, but it was only when we asked the Minister of State to intervene in an issue with regards to schools for the deaf in Cabra and Cork and two other schools last year that she engaged with those disability managers and we managed to resolve the problems. I know that the transition under progressing disability services and the set up of the children's disability network teams is an enormous challenge against a crippling recruitment shortage in the HSE. It is only through engagement with disability managers that we have any hope of trying to ensure that those services can be delivered and waiting lists dealt with. What has happened is regrettable and the HSE has to be called out. The Minister of State is doing a very good job in difficult circumstances, and needs to be supported and not muzzled in her functions.