Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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381. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of injuries reported to the Health and Safety Authority following the use of fairground and funfair equipment and roller coasters by persons in each of the years 2011 to 2018 and to date in 2019, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23557/19]

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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It should be noted that responsibility for the licensing and operation of Funfairs is a policy matter for Housing, Planning and Local Government as the existing legislation dealing with licensing of funfairs, the duties on organisers of funfairs, and the owners of fairground equipment, in the context of public safety, is covered by the Planning and Development Act 2000.

The role of the Health and Safety Authority in relation to Funfairs arises in the context of their overall legislative remit on workplace health and safety and in ensuring the protection of workers at work.

There were 5 accidents reported to the Health and Safety Authority relating to the fairground and funfair equipment and roller coaster sector for the time period from 2011 to date 2019. Information regarding the years these were reported can be seen in the following table.

It is important to clarify that there are a number of provisions that apply to the individual reporting responsibilities for accident reporting:

The reporting responsibility of an employer in relation to employee:

An employer must report the injury of any employee as a result of an accident that occurred while at work where the injury results in your employee being unable to carry out their normal work for more than three consecutive days, excluding the day of the accident.

The reporting responsibility of a person in control of a place of work in relation to a non-employee:

A person in control of a place of work must report the injury of a person who is not their employee and who is not at work but who was injured from a work activity in the instance where the injured person has had to be taken from the location of the accident in order to receive treatment in respect of that injury in a hospital or medical facility.

In addition, it is important to provide clarity in relation to the statutory requirements for the reporting of accidents to the HSA. There are three situations in which an accident should be reported to the Authority:

(I) in the course of employmentresulting in personal injury to the person carrying out the work activity. This could be an injury to an employee who is actually doing the work.

(b.)(ii) the course of employment which results in personal injury to an employee who was not doing the work that is the subject of the accident

(c.)(iii) from a work activitywhich results in personal injury to a person outside of the course of employment.