New health and safety executive created for North

While people held their breath in advance of news last week of the outcome of the latest round of talks on the political future of Northern Ireland, a new executive was quietly born at Stormont in Belfast after all.

A different child, admittedly, to the long-awaited and still undelivered Executive of the peace process but a close relation for all that. And a development that embodies how effective non-dysfunctional relations between the peoples of these islands could be.

The new Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) was initially to be launched at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. But with the protracted negotiations at Hillsborough and the knowledge that the political and media circus would move to Stormont in the event of a political agreement, Northern Ireland's new health and safety executive was moved across the Newtownards Road and duly delivered in the Stormont Hotel, opposite the gates of Stormont Castle.

The new HSENI, which is an executive non-departmental public body with a 10-member board and a staff of 70, will change the way workplace health and safety legislation is administered in Northern Ireland and it will spearhead the official drive to reduce workplace deaths, injuries and ill health. The executive assumes the functions of the former Health and Safety Agency, the Health and Safety Division of the Department of Economic Development (apart from its legislative-making functions) and the employment medical advisory service.

The new chairman of the executive, Mr Liam McBrinn, is the regional education organiser with the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union. He has chaired the health and safety committee of the Northern Ireland committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) since its inception.

Mr McBrinn told The Irish Times that he is the first trade union appointee to chair a health and safety body since Mr Andy Barr was appointed first chairman of the Health and Safety Agency in 1978.

He sees his appointment as a significant development for the ICTU and says he is "extremely proud that the ICTU has been recognised as an organisation that can bring leadership, with employers".

The new executive will have many opportunities "of extending and expanding its relationship with the HSA", he said. Close co-operation between North and South "has been going on for a number of years" and the two bodies will continue to co-operate not only in conferences but also, for instance, in implementing EU legislation.

He believed that when the economy in Northern Ireland lifted off, "that will bring new challenges to health and safety". Speaking at the launch of the HSENI, he said: "There can be no room for complacency when it comes to health and safety. We are, after all, talking about the difference between life and death."

He believed the new executive could make "a real contribution to ensuring that Northern Ireland is not only a good place to do business, but a safe place to do business".

The HSENI would "tackle those sectors such as quarries, agriculture and construction that present some of the more obvious and biggest risks", but it would "not lose sight of the many others that are less visible" particularly occupationally-related ill health and disease.

The executive would be a "dynamic and vigorous body" to protect people. But employees and employers "must understand that, as the new health and safety watchdog, the executive is not only capable of a loud bark, but can and will, when the situation warrants it, most definitely bite".

Speaking at the launch, Mr Gerry Loughran, Permanent Secretary, Department of Economic Development, said the new body would have "real power to determine and implement policy" and would be a really "all-singing, all-dancing" executive. Mr Tom Walsh, director general of the Health & Safety Authority (HSA), welcomed the appointment of Mr McBrinn. He regarded the appointment as sending a positive signal of on-going close co-operation between the HSA and the new northern executive.

Currently, a three-way forum of the HSA, Britain's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Health and Safety Commission (HSC), and the precursor to the HSENI meets at chair and chief executive level twice a year.

Indeed, such is the similarity of legislation and the close level of co-operation North and South and between Ireland and Britain that it is curious there was not a cross-Border body on health and safety established under the Belfast Agreement.

The contact details for the new body are: The Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland, 83 Ladas Drive, Belfast BT6 9FR. Telephone: 08 (01232) 243249. Fax: 08 (01232) 235383. E-mail: info@hse-ni.org.uk. Website: www.hseni.org.uk