The Construction Industry Federation has been resisting efforts to introduce joint monitoring of building sites by unions and management, as part of a new health and safety initiative. Sixteen of the 45 fatal industrial accidents that have occurred so far this year were in the construction sector.
At the launch of the Health and Safety Authority's 1997 report yesterday, SIPTU's safety officer, Mr Sylvester Cronin, said that anyone who raised safety issues on building sites was "effectively sacked". His own union had never faced such trenchant opposition to safety initiatives as it had met in the construction sector.
He asked the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, what he proposed to do to ensure joint monitoring of safety on sites took place. Mr Kitt replied: "You are quite right, there is a gap between what you want and the CIF."
Mr Kitt said he had met the two sides separately and the authority would continue to seek a solution to the problem. It was important to secure agreement on both sides for any joint approach to work.
The chief inspector of the authority, Mr Michael Henry, said a fundamental problem in construction was "that pretty well anyone can get into the industry and do building work, and too many of them don't have any level of competence".
The CIF was not represented at the publication of the report. Its director of business development, Mr Peter McCabe, said later this was because it had two safety meetings scheduled for yesterday. He said construction employers were not opposed to joint inspections on principle but there were already eight bodies carrying out audits of sites, including the authority.
There was no point "adding another layer of bureaucracy with no contractual or legal status", he said. "This needs to be fully thought out."
The industry did favour more control over entry, he said, agreeing with Mr Henry that "anybody can be a builder or building worker and clearly, in 1998, that shouldn't be the case". The CIF was also anxious to remove safety items from the competitive tendering process.
It often took "three years to go through the planning process for a new development, a year to design it and then we are expected to build it in six months". However, he rejected SIPTU claims that people who raised safety issues were sacked. "You hear people generalising, but you don't hear specific complaints. " Mr McCabe said that any specific complaints brought to the CIF's attention would be fully investigated.
He also said that at least half the fatal accidents recorded for the construction sector involved individuals killed while employed by people like farmers and manufacturers to do structural work.