Managers of organisations and companies will be more liable to prosecution for manslaughter arising from deaths caused by serious negligence, if the latest report from the Law Reform Commission is transformed into law.
A draft Bill incorporating the report's main recommendations is appended to the report.
The report, published yesterday, will have implications for the suppliers of goods and services as well as employers, whose duty to their employees is already covered by health and safety legislation. The commission's proposals require gross negligence to be proved in bringing a prosecution for manslaughter.
The report, entitled Corporate Killing, recommends a new statutory criminal offence of corporate manslaughter. This would make a company, a partnership or a public body responsible for a death arising from its gross negligence. It also recommends an offence for senior managers of grossly negligent management causing death.
According to the report, the existing law does allow the prosecution of organisations for manslaughter, but this has never happened. "No single method of attributing liability to a corporate entity has been found to be authoritative," it says. It points out that prosecutions arising from the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster, and the Southall train crash, failed because it was not possible under English law to identify a single "controlling mind" responsible.
The report identifies a number of instances where organisational failures in Ireland caused death. These include the Blood Transfusion Service Board, which breached its own rules when it failed to investigate complaints properly and to recall contaminated batches of blood produce, leading to the infection of large numbers of people; and the Stardust nightclub fire, where serious omissions led to the deaths of 48 young people. The inquiry into the Whiddy Island disaster found that the renewal of instrumentation would have avoided the disaster. Similar failures to apply best practice contributed to the rail crashes at Buttevant and Cherryville.
For there to be an offence of manslaughter under the proposed legislation, gross negligence is required. This means recklessness as to the danger involved in an act or omission, when the danger would have been obvious to any reasonable person.
The proposed legislation will allow for the prosecution of individual managers found to have acted with gross negligence in a way that contributed to the corporate offence. The penalty would be imprisonment for up to 12 years and/or an unlimited fine.