The Health and Safety Authority which monitors safety in the workplace, is under-resourced because of a cost-cutting attitude in the Department of Finance, a senior inspector has claimed.

Mr Vincent McGauran said the Department of Finance was reluctant to provide the resources for public servants to be employed. "We are just hanging in there now. We are very short of staff," he said.

Since 1995 there have been 39 fatalities in the construction industry, with 12 so far this year.

Mr McGauran was speaking in the aftermath of a High Court hearing on Monday in which Zoe Developments, the largest builder of apartments in Dublin, was ordered to stop all work on a site where a man was killed in an accident last week.

The interim order will be reviewed next Monday. It was sought by the HSA after a Co Mayo worker, Mr James Masterson, died when he fell through plastic sheeting on the top floor of partially constructed apartments at Ringsend, Dublin.

Mr McGauran told The Irish Times that the numbers of those employed in construction had been rising steadily, while productivity on sites was rising at a greater pace. He said that a hotel could be built in nine months and bookings were often taken before the project would finish.

"The actual physical amount of construction has increased much more dramatically," he said. "Most people in the industry feel that by jacking up the pace, you are increasing the risk."

He said the authority had recently secured a net increase of one employee after replacements were brought in for five people who retired.

"We hope 1998 might be better. It is a Department of Finance thing. It became fashionable in the late eighties to get rid of people. Very plainly, that attitude is rife in the Department of Finance," he said.

It was "a grim equation" that since 1989, when the law on work safety changed, there had been no substantial increase in staff to meet the requirements of the Health & Safety Act which now covers all workers instead of the traditional construction, factory, mine and quarry and dock workers.

There are 112 staff attached to the HSA, of which 59 are inspectors. The £4 million budget amounted to £3 a head for each employee in the workforce, Mr McGauran said.

If the HSA were to have comparable staffing levels to the British Health and Safety Executive, numbers would have to be doubled.

He said that court action by the HSA made demands on its resources and that the maximum fine of £1,500 was not a deterrent to companies breaching the regulations.

"Rarely have the courts imposed the maximum. What I would really like to get from a prosecution is that it would improve matters in the future and it does not achieve that," he said.

There was a need for more inspectors and better systems across the industry, he said. He added that he would like to see a maximum fine of £15,000 and "a more hands-on approach to safety by builders".

He suggested that safety officers paid for by the contractors should be present on larger sites. "Safety is a management function and it has to be managed on a day-to-day basis like any other management function," he said.

A spokesman for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment said that staffing levels at the HSA had gone up substantially since 1990 and that this week's Estimates provided for a £600,000 increase to £4.7 million in the authority's budget.

In recent weeks an increase of seven staff had been sanctioned and from January 1st staffing would increase to 119 from 112. This had risen from 1995 when there were 99 staff.

The spokesman said a comprehensive plan on the HSA's future had been submitted by the authority to the Minister of State for Labour and Consumer Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt. It was currently being reviewed.