A "blitz" of construction site inspections over the next fortnight was promised yesterday by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) as part of a Europe-wide campaign to reduce fatality rates.
The campaign, titled "Don't Fall for It", will focus on falls from heights, which were responsible for nearly half the construction site deaths in the Republic last year.
About 500 inspections will be carried out in the first half of June and offenders will face closures and, where appropriate, prosecution, the authority warned yesterday.
However, a SIPTU official, Mr Eric Fleming, said the HSA did not have sufficient resources to carry out its mandate. He expressed concern that the campaign might be a "flash in the pan".
Despite a series of measures to address the problem, lack of safety continues to be a major problem on construction sites.
Nine people have been killed in site accidents this year, putting the sector on course to record a higher death toll than the 22 killed last year.
April and May have been particularly black months for the industry, with six fatalities having occurred in the past two months.
In the most recent incident, on May 14th, a Kerry County Council worker, Mr Thomas Flaherty, was killed when a steamroller backed into him as he was directing traffic at a roadworks site. He was 54 and had five children.
Announcing the new campaign yesterday, Mr Frank Cunneen, chairman of the HSA, said "a blitz of inspections" would be carried out throughout the State. "Our inspectors will not be slow to use the powers available to them where they see breaches of health and safety legislation."
The inspection blitz would be just one element of a comprehensive programme of activities aimed at improving safety in the industry, from design stage to construction. Another would be the distribution of 4,000 copies of a booklet, The Absolutely Essential Health and Safety Toolkit for the Smaller Construction Contractor, by HSA inspectors. That initiative is sponsored by the Construction Industry Federation.
The campaign would continue into July, said Mr Cunneen, when a report on the inspection blitz would be published. "This report will outline the inspection findings, which will be made widely available in an effort to further highlight the issues which must be addressed." Phase two of the campaign would be launched in the autumn, he said, which would kick off with a second inspection blitz and further awareness-raising initiatives.
Mr Fleming, SIPTU's construction branch secretary, who attended the campaign launch in Dublin, said that with "all the will in the world" the HSA could not "do what needs to be done" without sufficient resources.
Only 4,500 inspections were planned for this year, he said, compared with a targeted figure of 8,000 three years ago.
Mr Tom Beegan, the HSA chief executive, said there was a rationale behind reducing the number of inspections. Site inspections were just one element of the HSA's strategy and "not the full picture".
"Of course I would be much happier if I had more resources but I live in the real world. We have to keep improving our performance, but we have to do that within an existing or shrinking cost base. We'll rise to that challenge."
Mr Fergus Whelan of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, a workers' representative on the board of the HSA, said the reduction in inspections had been discussed by the board.
There was now an increased focus, he said, on "higher-level prosecutions" and site closures.
