One of the main problems with health and safety management is that it is not sexy. Accidents and fatalities grab the headlines, while responsible steps taken by employers of integrity to prevent injuries or deaths to workers rarely even make it to the "In Brief" columns. If it bleeds it leads; but if blood has been prevented, where's the news story in that?

And yet, as Ms Mary Darlington, safety consultant and former board member of the Health and Safety Authority, says: "Employers have no right to injure people."

She believes that accidents don't "just happen". In fact, "99 per cent of accidents are preventable". Accidents are "never just an incident on their own" and she believes that accident investigations can all too often amount to "shallow affairs".

Dig beneath the apparent misfortune of an "accident" and you will invariably find a history of near-misses, minor incidents, unsafe procedures or procedures being bypassed occasionally or habitually. Most accidents can be traced to a failure on the part of management to consult employees, or a failure by employees to follow established procedures which in turn manifests a failure by employers to monitor and audit health and safety procedures, she says. Ms Darlington is one of the speakers at the forthcoming Health and Safety Review annual conference which takes as its theme: "Safety through prevention - managing safety to prevent accidents and illnesses".

The Health and Safety Review is an authoritative, comprehensive and, in the view of this column, indispensable journal on health and safety in the workplace in Ireland.

Delegates to a conference such as this can help to prevent accidents in the workplace.

According to Mr Liam O'Mahony, a safety consultant who was involved in establishing the International Safety Management Organisation, basic safety demands not only a physically safe workplace and safe procedures but safety management. Unfortunately, the physical and procedural side "has been seen as the whole thing".

Increasingly, however, people are realising that merely having the physical and procedural elements in place "doesn't work unless you manage the procedures so that everything is done in a safe way".

Moreover, if you don't manage, for instance, an inspection and corrective action programme, the physical conditions will break down and procedures will not be followed or improved upon. If you don't manage safety, "then the place simply isn't safe", he says.

He believes the physical problems of workplace safety have to a large extent been solved. It's unusual these days to see machinery which isn't properly safeguarded or dangerous chemicals that aren't properly contained. But safety training, safety supervision and managed safety procedures need to be tackled more than anything else, he says.

One of the problems nowadays is the question of flexibility, he says. Today's workers tend to be expected to be highly flexible. "You can only manage that from a safety point of view if the person is very, very well trained. Very disciplined, and I don't mean that in the negative sense." Workers need to have precise procedures to follow and situations must be controlled or managed in a "very tight, effective and efficient way".

Mr Paul Glenfield, a partner in Matheson Ormsby Prentice with a special interest in health and safety, will also be speaking at the conference. He says the legal duty to draw up a Safety Statement should not be seen as an end in itself but as the beginning and focal point for a healthy and safe workplace. It is the legal duty of employers to actually prepare their safety statement and failure to do this can lead to a prosecution. Moreover enforcement machinery is in place and used by the Health and Safety Authority and companies prosecuted are named in the annual HSA report.

Other speakers at the conference include Dr P J Claffey, deputy chief inspector with the HSA; Mr Tom Merriman, health and safety co-ordinator with the Eastern Health Board; Mr James Jeffers of Aughinish Alumina; Mr Thomas Garavan, author; and Dr Philip McCrea, an occupational physician.

The Health and Safety Review annual conference takes place on at the Doyle Green Isle Hotel on Thursday 27th May. Cost: £235 (subscribers), £275 (non-subscribers). For further details, contact Ms Lucilla Hyland, IRN Publishing, 121-123 Ranelagh, Dublin 6. Tel: 01 497 2711. Fax: 01 497 2779.