Fines for workplace health and safety breaches totalled €1.3m in 2023

Nineteen prosecutions for breaches of workplace health and safety legislation resulted in fines totalling more than €1.3 million last year, the Health and Safety Authority’s (HSA) annual report shows.

Several of the prosecutions concerned serious injury or death of employees.

One employer in Tipperary was sentenced to 12 months in prison after a vehicle that was unable to brake resulted in the death of an employee and the injury of another.

Ove Arup, an engineering consultancy firm, was fined €750,000 for failing to prevent access to a fragile surface on the floor of the plantroom in Ringsend, Co Dublin, resulting in the death of a man. The non-employee fell through a ventilation shaft.

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The HSA carried out 10,683 investigations in 2023, resulting in 404 improvement notices, 290 prohibition notices and 7,373 pieces of written advice.

Last year 83 fatal incidents were reported to the HSA with investigations confirming that 43 were work-related.

Twenty deaths (72 per cent) were in the agriculture sector, 16 of which were farmers, while a further 11 were in construction.

Men accounted for 39 of the 43 deaths. Working with vehicles (13) and falling from height (11) were the leading causes of work-related fatalities.

[ Tributes paid to Reece Donoghue (17) who was killed in workplace incident in Co Cavan ]

It was a significant increase from 2022 when 28 workplace fatalities were recorded, the lowest on record since the establishment of the HSA in 1989.

However, HSA records show an overall decrease in the rate of work-related fatalities per 100,000, from 2.8 in 2014 to 1.6 in 2023.

“While much progress has been made in improving workplace safety in recent years, sadly we are seeing a persistent trend over many years now in the agriculture and construction sectors, where workers continue to lose their lives and many of these are self-employed,” said Conor O’Brien, chief executive of the HSA.

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