Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 May 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Role and Operation of the Health and Safety Authority: Discussion

Mr. Mark Cullen:

To add something further, the written advice comes under our primary legislation - a bona fide request. In itself, that is a direction to an employer to make the improvements. As outlined in our opening statement, it is about improving the culture of health and safety. From the inspector's perspective that means working with the employers and employees to ensure health and safety is being managed proactively and in doing that, what the inspector observes and the opinions they form will dictate the level of enforcement. There is a high level of written advice, which will contain directions, and then it is lesser as we go up to improvement notices and prohibition notices. Last year, we concluded 19 prosecutions, but there is a lag on those because they are coming primarily from investigations. Investigations can take anything from two to four years and do not come into the courts system for a long period, so there is a prosecutorial piece-----