A campaign to combat work-related stress, which is estimated to affect more than 40 million employees in the EU, began yesterday.
The campaign will be co-ordinated in Ireland by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA), which believes that the problem is growing in the Republic.
However, the HSA's organisational psychologist, Ms Patricia Murray, said there was no reliable data available on the incidence of work-related stress in the State because workers did not always accurately report being stressed. Some felt that they were stressed when they were not, while others, who were actually stressed, believed they weren't, she said.
Nonetheless, she said a study carried out last year by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions had found that Irish people suffered from less stress in the workplace than workers in any other EU country. It found that 12 per cent of Irish people reported feeling stressed at work, compared with an EU average of 28 per cent.
The pan-European campaign, launched in Strasbourg yesterday by the president of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, will run until October. It will attempt to raise awareness of the risks of work-related stress, which affects more women than men and is often caused by lack of job security and work overload.
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work said that nearly one in three of Europe's workers reported being affected by stress at work. It pointed out how stress was responsible for millions of lost working days every year.
Mr Cox said that the changing world of work, particularly the rise of job insecurity, had made work-related stress one of the biggest safety and health challenges facing businesses today.