Good Neighbour scheme a simple but successful concept

The Good Neighbour scheme is an Irish success story. It celebrates its third anniversary this month having been launched at the first European Week of Safety and Health at Work in October 1996. According to Mr Pat O'Halloran, an inspector with the Health and Safety Authority with responsibility for the scheme: "I am amazed at what some companies do and how far they go to assist other people. We have Good Neighbours in every county in Ireland.

"The UK have actually made this Irish idea a major plank of their next three-year programme. It's one of their four major planks. They intend doubling the scheme every year for the next three years to see how it works."

The genius of the scheme is simple: larger companies with bigger budgets, infrastructure and specialist arrangements share their health and safety expertise with smaller companies. The idea came from the Bausch & Lomb contact lens plant in Waterford where former board member of the HSA Ms Mary Darlington and her colleagues involved neighbouring companies in promoting greater workplace health and safety.

Following positive feedback from a speech by Ms Darlington to a joint conference of small and medium sized companies about big companies helping out smaller enterprises, the HSA organised a pilot scheme three years ago.

The Good Neighbour scheme does not cost anything, is user-friendly and avoids any semblance of form filling or red tape. Participating companies from a cross-section of industrial sectors, both Irish and foreign-owned, are invited to share their health and safety resources following recommendations by HSA inspectors. Larger companies tend to help smaller companies with whom they have a business relationship, such as their contractors, suppliers or service providers, or businesses in their locality. It is up to each company to decide the type and level of support offered.

Some choose to participate by opening up their training courses, worker health seminars or safety talks to smaller companies. Others provide simulated disaster exercises or simply invite neighbouring companies to safety quizzes. "Most companies now have contractors on site, be it catering, security, mechanical-electrical services, people coming in to do extensions for them, suppliers and transport companies constantly coming in and out," says Mr O'Halloran.

One company took a transport initiative by inviting in the Garda to speak to employees and contractors about health and safety on the road.

A larger company offered the assistance of its safety team to its mechanical-electrical contractors. "Now this also works for the larger company. They get the benefit out of it because they're not importing risks into their company. And they then offer maybe to audit the company's own premises or they may audit their safety statement," he says.

Other companies might give access to their safety files, their safety library, their videos and their training facilities. "Some of them go into it in a huge way, depending on where they're located and the company culture, by and large," he says. Under the Good Neighbour scheme, companies are only required to do something during the safety week - the week now ending.

"We don't criticise the level of participation. That's left to the company. We don't want them to think that we're setting the agenda . . . They're not required to do it on a yearly basis but some of them do it all the year round," he says. Participating companies receive a certificate from the Minister of State for Labour, Trade and Consumer Affairs. The number of participating companies has risen from 50 in 1996 to more than 125 this year.

"You know Ireland has come a long way. Our chairman the other day mentioned that in Europe you're at the fifth or sixth generation of worker. In Ireland really we're only into the second or third generation of an industrialised workforce." The scheme enhances health and safety awareness in companies the HSA would only rarely visit.

For further information about the Good Neighbour Scheme contact Mr Pat O'Halloran, HSA, 10 Hogan Place, Dublin 2. Telephone: 01 614 7000. Fax: 01 614 7023. Web: www.hsa.ie/osh

Joe Armstrong is at jmarms@irish-times.ie