WORKING LIFE: Tom Beegan of the Health and Safety Authority is overseeing significant internal change at the authority and a new approach to tackling health and safety issues, writes Ciaran Brennan

Stepping into the shoes of a man who led an organisation since its inception is no easy task. But Mr Tom Beegan, who took over as director general of the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) from Mr Tom Walsh last September, has settled nicely into the role.

"Throughout my career I've moved and taken on significant challenges in a whole range of different areas from working in the voluntary sector and running a private company as part of that, to having significant experience in the public sector and working as a part-time adviser with the Department of Health. So I have moved around a good bit and have been used to taking on challenges and hopefully leaving a good legacy," he says.

It is not that playing on a big stage is anything new to the 46-year-old. In the early 1970s he played full forward on the Roscommon senior football team, which reached the national league final in 1973/74 season.

Despite being in his new job for just seven months, one gets the feeling that Mr Beegan is working hard to leave a good legacy at the HSA, which is undergoing significant internal change since he took over. It is also conducting an extensive customer research survey to canvass views on the service it offers. Added to this will be a survey of staff to get their opinions on how their roles are being redesigned.

Even in advance of the customer service survey, Mr Beegan already feels that significant progress has been made within the organisation in getting the health and safety message across.

"In recent times, there has been significant raising of awareness among employers and employees because one of the things I'm anxious to do is to say this is a two-way street - the employers have legal responsibilities but, equally, employees have responsibility to take on board and use the training, the facilities and the equipment that has been given by the employer. It's a joint process, a partnership approach," he says.

A key area where progress has been made is in the construction sector, according to Mr Beegan.

"We have a construction safety partnership in place and through that we have put in place a safe pass system, which requires everybody new coming on to a construction site to have a basic level of qualification and training in health and safety, and that is working out extremely well. I have to complement the Construction Industry Federation, FÁS and the unions on the roles they have played because it has been a tremendous success," says Mr Beegan.

Nevertheless, there were some high-profile cases involving serious breaches of the health and safety regulations last year.

"The courts took a very dim view of that and, in fact, imposed record fines," says Mr Beegan. "But if you look at the trends overall, if you go back to 1998 in the construction sector, there were 15.06 deaths per 100,000 employees in the construction sector, which is a very crude form of measurement.

"In 2001, that has dropped to 7.77 per 100,000 so, whereas any death is one death too many, the trend is downwards at a time when there has been significant growth in the sector. But we are not happy and we won't be happy until it is zero but at least it is moving in the right way."

Deaths and injury in the agriculture industry remains a concern, according to Mr Beegan, particularly as many involve children. The fragmented nature of the industry and the fact that farms also tend to incorporate the family home make them somewhat unique when it comes to health and safety. But Mr Beegan said there will be a concerted push in this area in the coming year, involving education and enforcement.

A dual approach to health, adopting a "carrot and stick" approach, is now being favoured by the HSA. Its programme for 2002 includes a radical proposal in relation to self-assessment for businesses with regard to health and safety - as opposed to an approach solely based on enforcement by the HSA. This will involve a change of attitude among companies by incorporating health and safety into the business model, says Mr Beegan.

"What we're trying to get across to people is that if you stand back and reassess the way you manage this place you can have a positive contributor to the bottom line, not a cost as it [health and safety\] is perceived at the moment," he says.

"We want to talk to companies and to the public sector and say we can find a way to integrate this as part of your business model and, by doing that, then we will devise a a self-assessment system that will allow you to send us the information on a regular basis once you have achieved the standard of getting into the club in the first place and then we can concentrate on areas where we can have best effect. And perhaps every two years, like the Q mark, we can do an inspection and see whether you stay in the club or don't."

Resources and staff have been allocated to this approach and the HSA has had discussions with health board chief executives and the voluntary hospitals about implementing self-assessment.

"That is not in any way to say we're going to abdicate our responsibilities in relation to enforcement under the law," he says. "But we're saying we have to work smarter. The traditional way hasn't delivered the results so we have to try a new way and we believe the best way is that it's inculcated into the culture of the organisation."

A new issue on the agenda for the HSA is the whole area of bullying and stress at work. It is one of the organisations appointed to co-ordinate a response to anti-bullying and has established a code of practice.

"We want to start a debate on that \ and we want an informed debate," he says. "We haven't got a sufficient body of knowledge at the moment to allow us to design specific codes of practice."

It is a complicated nebulous area, he says, which will need a lot of discussion. Employers should be looking for signs of stresses in the workplace, such as high turnover, high incidence of sick leave, unhappiness among employees and bad industrial relations, he says. But he also advocates caution, saying that signs of stress among employees may not be due to the workplace.

"It can also be a predisposition to the person themselves, they can bring stress from outside work into it, so we need to be careful. We're not into the business of blame on this, we're in the business of getting informed and making a reasonable decision," he says.

Mr Beegan's track record in the area suggests he can lead the debate on this area. Prior to becoming director general of the HSA, he was deputy chief executive and regional manager of the South Eastern Health Board, with responsibility for strategic development and capital investment programmes. He also had a key role in the project team that is devising a new national health strategy.

From Co Roscommon, Mr Beegan came to Dublin aged 15 to study mechanical engineering by scholarship. He soon left the course and began working on a major construction project in Ringsend.

He then trained as a psychiatric nurse and began working in the Eastern Health Board. Over the years, Mr Beegan has been a senior adviser in the Department of Health on national policy matters and a key player on several national policy development committees within the health services sector. He was also director of Western Care Association, a voluntary body set up by the Western Health Board to provide support for those affected by physical disability and autism. The association included a limited company, of which Mr Beegan was managing director, which produced clocks and other goods for sale.

Away from work, gaelic football remains a big interest and he is still part-manager of a team in Dublin. His other interest is horses - one of his daughters is involved in one-day eventing. Mr Beegan lives in Kilkenny with his wife Pat and three children. His Kilkenny location allows easier access to the HSA's various regional offices.

"Because we are a national organisation, I also want to get around to meet our staff and, more importantly, representatives of various employees and trade unions and Government departments. The agenda we have set ourselves is a dual agenda: meeting the expectations of the customers and also changing internally to make sure we're fit for that purpose," he says.