THE average cost of industrial accidents in the Republic may be over twice that of accidents in Northern Ireland, a conference on health and safety has been told, writes Padraig Yeates.

A recent study shows that the average cost of accidents in the Republic is £225.63p, compared with £103.13p in Northern Ireland.

It also shows that for every £1 spent in direct costs on accidents there are much higher indirect costs, which are not usually recoverable from insurance policies.

In the Republic, for every £1 of direct costs there is an average indirect cost of £10.51. The comparable figure for Northern Ireland is £4.84p of indirect costs for every £1 in direct costs.

The study was conducted by Dr David Jacobson of Dublin City University Business School and Ms Ziene Mottiar of Carlow RTC and the findings presented a conference in Dublin yesterday organised by Health and Safety Review.

It looked at direct and indirect costs of accidents in Ireland. Indirect costs cover things like lime lost by employees attending to an injured colleague, redeployment or recruitment of staff to cover a gap in the organisation caused by accidents.

The biggest single indirect cost is the time lost from work by the injured employee. According to the study this accounts for between 65 per cent and 82 per cent of total costs.

The study also shows that for every £1 of insurable costs there were uninsured costs of £27.95p in the Republic.

The comparable figure for Northern Ireland was £9.74p in uninsured costs for every £1 of insured costs.