Construction firms claimed yesterday that they were struggling to cope with an "avalanche" of new health and safety laws.
Their representative body, the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), accused EU legislators of being "totally oblivious" to the impact of regulation on small and medium companies.
It also criticised the Government for failing to carry out impact assessments in advance of new health and safety regulations being introduced.
Speaking before an international safety conference starts in Dublin today, CIF health and safety executive Dermot Carey said the federation was worried about the "increasing array" of legislation from the EU.
"In recent weeks alone, the Minister for Labour Affairs [ Tony Killeen] has signed into law a set of work-at-height regulations, asbestos regulations, noise regulations and vibration regulations, all of which have their origins as directives from the EU.
"This comes after the increased obligations placed on employers by the revised Health and Safety at Work Act last September. Additional regulation and legislation is due later in the year. All of the new regulations place a significant and complicated administrative burden on small employers," he said.
Mr Carey said the CIF questioned whether "this profuse regulation" is the way forward in the efforts to improve safety at work.
A spokeswoman for Mr Killeen said the Government had "absolutely no choice" but to transpose EU regulations into Irish law.
Both Mr Killeen and Mr Carey are to address the two-day international conference organised by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, which opens today at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin.
Health and Safety Authority (HSA) chief executive Tom Beegan will tell the conference that avoidable injury or accident at work must become "as socially unacceptable as smoking in the workplace, dangerous driving or drink-driving".
John Lacey, of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, will tell delegates that Britain and Ireland has a "pretty disastrous" record on construction safety.
"In the UK and Ireland, we are still killing far too many people in the construction industry," he told The Irish Times yesterday.
"We are averaging deaths of 70 people on construction sites in the UK every year. The situation in Ireland is comparable, particularly with all your building work." Mr Lacey said that falls from heights still accounted for the most deaths.
He said the construction industry must learn from past mistakes to avoid future deaths.
In a statement yesterday, however, the CIF "cautiously" welcomed the fact there had been a marked reduction this year in fatalities at building sites.
It said the latest figures published by the HSA showed there had been a 50 per cent decline in building site deaths to date this year, compared with the same time last year. Figures published on the HSA website show that seven people had been killed on construction sites to date, compared with 23 in total last year.
Building Safety Regulations: What they cover
EU construction safety regulations transposed into Irish law since early July cover activities under four separate headings:
- Working at height - employers required to ensure that all work at height is "properly planned" and "appropriately supervised";
- Sound - employers required to make individual hearing protectors available where needed, and workers are obliged to use them where noise exposure exceeds certain values;
- Vibrations - measures introduced to protect employees from the risks associated with vibrations owing to their effects on safety and health, in particular muscular/bone structure, neurological and vascular disorders;
- Asbestos - measures to protect workers who remove asbestos and those who accidentally come into contact with asbestos at work in the course of servicing and maintenance activities.