Government must act on construction safety - SIPTU

SIPTU has today called for the imposition of "very substantial penalties" in order to make employers take the issue of construction safety seriously.

According to the Union’s Safety and Health Adviser, Mr Sylvester Cronin: "The fines imposed by the Courts are little more than a pittance - sometimes amounting to less than a thousand pounds in cases where employer negligence cost the life of an employee.

"The need for legislative changes to allow for greater fines and penalties is greater than ever," he said.

Mr Cronin has called for the Minister for Labour Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, to take urgent action to improve health and safety in the construction industry. "The appalling rate of fatalities and serious injuries among building workers should give the lie to any growing sense of complacency on the issue," he said.

"While modest progress has been made in raising awareness of safety in the construction industry, it is totally misleading to argue, as some have done, that fatality rates in the industry have been halved.

"In the 1980s there was an average of less than seven people killed each year; by the mid 1990s this rose to an average of ten fatalities each year and further increased to 18 in the late 1990s and remained at that level in 2000. So there has been no real improvement in the number of fatalities in the construction sector," he said.

Mr Cronin went on to say that claims made about safety and health matters could undermine the recent "modest advances" that have been made through the Construction Safety Partnership.

"Although there has been significant progress in many facets of commercial and economic activity in Ireland since the 1980s, the safety and health of workers consistently bucks this upward trend.

"We have seen huge improvements in productivity, product quality, product reliability, the overall state of the economy and in living standards. But workplace safety and health seems to be moving in the opposite direction," he said.