Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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135. To ask the Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment the number of HSA inspectors hired since the beginning of July 2020; the additional resources that have been provided to the HSA from budget 2021; his plans to hire additional HSA inspectors in 2020 and 2021 respectively; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31487/20]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The staff of the Health and Safety Authority is comprised of both administration and inspector grades. The inspector grades comprise of Grade I (senior inspectors) as well as GII and GIII inspectors. Inspectors operate across all mandates of the Health and Safety Authority including occupational health and safety and market surveillance of products and chemicals.

At the end of August 2020, the Health and Safety Authority employed 181 staff, including inspectors, professional and technical specialists, administrators and clerical staff. Of the 181 staff, 109 are employed in inspector grades with 67 of these inspectors available for field work in relation to checking compliance with the Return to Work Safely Protocol.

The Authority has not hired new inspectors in the period since July 2020 to date. However, the Health and Safety Authority inspectorate is being supplemented significantly by deploying other inspectors from across the system who already have an environmental health, agriculture or other workplace/business inspection responsibilities to carry out Protocol compliance checks. These resources are drawn from the Workplace Relations Commission, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the cohort of Environmental Health Officers, the Department of Education as well as the Sea Fisheries Protection Agency. This has resulted in up to an additional 700 inspectors checking compliance with the Protocol as part of their normal inspection programme.

The 2021 funding being made available to the Health and Safety Authority will enable the Authority to assist businesses to comply with workplace health and safety obligations as well as assisting businesses to plan for a changed regulatory landscape post-Brexit especially in relation to chemical usage, product safety, market surveillance and accreditation.

The additional Budget allocation of €4m to the Health and Safety Authority is primarily an additional pay allocation to increase the staff available to the Authority, including the recruitment of additional inspectors, to deliver on its mandate.

The Health and Safety Authority will use the additional funding to establish a new Occupational Health Division that will initially support occupational health responses to COVID-19. However, the determination of the potential number, grades and roles of new staff which can be best utilised with this additional funding is an operational matter, in the first instance, for the Health and Safety Authority.

Officials of my Department will discuss this further with the Health and Safety Authority to establish their preferences for the utilisation of the additional funding.

The establishment of an Occupational Health Division will ensure that the Health and Safety Authority will be in a stronger position to meet the demands being placed on it for increased inspections and to provide a suite of supports to businesses, workers and public health officials in the context of COVID-19. Any investment in a new Occupational Health Division would also represent a long-term investment by the State in worker health leading to a reduction in workplace injuries and absences which contributes, in turn, to an improvement in the productivity and competitiveness of Irish businesses and a reduction in the cost to the State of illness benefits.

While the Health and Safety Authority will continue to be to the forefront in helping employers and employees to deal with the challenges of COVID-19 in the workplace it is also important to bear in mind that other workplace health and safety risks across many sectors of the economy, including high-risk sectors of construction and farming, will remain a priority for the Health and Safety Authority.