Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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130. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of whole-time equivalents qualified to conduct workplace inspections that are employed by the Health and Safety Authority; and the number employed in 2008. [39176/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) currently has 95.9 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff in the inspector grades who are qualified to carry out inspections. It is currently in the latter stages of recruiting 11 inspectors who, subject to passing of medical examinations and the acceptance of contracts, should be able to start work in quarter 4 of this year. 

On December 31 2008 the HSA had 124.8 FTE staff in the inspector grades who were qualified to carry out inspections.

The majority of staff in the inspector grades carry out workplace inspections and the remainder carry out a wide range of other activities such as the development of legislative proposals and guidance, promotional activities, developing safety health and chemicals policy, processing FOI requests and representing Irish interests in various EU fora.

In recent years, the HSA, in common with many other State Agencies and Government Departments, has had to contend with resource challenges involving reduced staff numbers. In order to counteract this trend the HSA engaged in a number of "smarter" work practices in order to ensure its message of improving workplace health and safety continues to reach its largest possible audience. These practices include the development of the BeSMART online risk assessment tool, the publishing of online eLearning courses and in the agriculture area, the introduction of a programme of informative Farm Walks. New ways of working have also included the updating of the HSA’s inspection data management system to increase ease and efficiency of data entry though a simplified data entry system and a new smartphone based field inspection data capture system is currently being piloted, again to improve efficiency.

The HSA produces a Programme of Work each year setting out its plan for all areas of its work, including inspection targets. The 2017 Programme of Work set a target of 11,100 inspections and investigations. As of 1 September, it has carried out 61% of its target number of inspections and investigations for the year.

It has recently also carried out a significant revision of its Workforce Plan aimed at taking account of the impact of trends such as the growth in employment and in particular the extremely strong growth in the high-risk construction sector and the business and jobs opportunities presented by Brexit. Its inspectors are at the core of addressing these issues both through traditional workplace inspections and through a range of policy, promotional and advisory activities.