Health and Safety Authority

Data Management and Analytics Unit

Health and Safety Authority, Metropolitan Building, James Joyce Street, Dublin 1, Ireland

In Ireland there is a requirement to report an accident where a person is injured at a place of work and cannot perform their normal work for more than 3 consecutive days, not including the day of the accident.

A fatal accident at work is defined as an accident which leads to the death of a victim within one year of the accident.

See simplified description of reporting requirements here: General Application Regulations 2007 - Health and Safety Authority (hsa.ie)

These data are reported in accordance with ESAW methodology. The data that Ireland's Health and Safety Authority reports to Eurostat include the following variables:

Case ID
4-digit NACE economic sector
ISCO-08 occupation of victim
Mid-point of age-groups
Sex
Type of injury
Body part injured
Geographic region (NUTS-3 region)
Date of incident
Time (hour of incident)
Size of enterprise
Nationality
Employment status
Severity of injury (days lost)
Work environment
Deviation
Contact - Mode of injury
Material agent (Contact - Mode of injury)

Road Traffic Accident

Weight

The data sources are (1) reported accidents to Health and Safety Authority and (2) an ad hoc health and safety module conducted by Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO), our National Statistics Institute.

Regular press releases are issued and include some of the following key points:

The number of fatal workplace accidents;
The overall worker fatality rate;
Employment status of fatal accident victims;
The number of non-fatal injuries reported;
Overall non-fatal injury rate;
The main cause of non-fatal injuries;
The NACE sectors reporting the highest number of non-fatal injuries.

All national data are gathered by the same ESAW classifications:

• NACE Rev. 2: 2nd revision of the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community managed by Eurostat. For ESAW data NACE Rev. 2 is used from reference year 2008 onwards.
• ISCO-08: International Standard Classification of Occupations managed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) (revision of 2008). ISCO-08 should be used from reference year 2011 onwards. ISCO-88 was used until 2010;
• ICSE-93: International Classification by Status in Employment (revision of 1993);
• NUTS: Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics. Latest NUTS version in force, depending on the reference year of the data collection.

Every NACE sector with the exception of NACE sectors T - Activities of households as employers; undifferentiated goods and services producing activities of  households for own use and U - Activities of extra territorial organisations and bodies are covered.

COVERAGE OF ECONOMIC SECTORS (NACE), (Annual update expected)

Additional comments on coverage of economic sectors

Codes:

y Sector fully covered
n Sector not covered at all
p Secor partially covered
n.a. Not applicable, i.e. sector does not exist in country

An accident at work is defined as follows:

"any accident occurs at a place of work as a result of which any person carrying out work at that place of work dies or is prevented from performing his normal work for more than three consecutive days, excluding the day of the accident but including any days which would not have been working days"

Ireland's inclusions and exclusions are the same as those specified by ESAW. Fatal accidents at work are also defined as accidents that lead to the death of a victim within one year of the accident.

All mandatory variables are submitted, in addition to the optional Phase III variables Deviation, Work environment, Contact - mode of injury and the Material agent associated with the Contact - mode of injury.

COVERAGE OF ESAW VARIABLES (Annual update expected)

Additional comments on coverage of ESAW variables

Codes:

Coverage
y Variable fully covered
n Variable not covered at all, i.e. variable is so far not collected in country
p Variable partially covered

Days lost
y num Days lost are covered and in data file listed by numbers (004 - 182)
y cat Days lost are covered and in data file listed by categories (A01 - A06)
p num, p cat Days lost are partly covered and listed by numbers (categories)

Type of weight
U weight to correct under-reporting
S weight to account for sampling
Sp weight to correct special sampling

Data are collected and reported using ESAW methodology: "If a person is a victim of more than one accident during the reference year, several cases are reported (one for each accident).

If there are several victims associated with a single accident, each case is reported (one for each victim)."

All persons aged 15 years and over in Employment.

Every work related accident which prevents a person from performing their normal duties for greater than three days (4+ days) is legally required to be reported to the Health and Safety Authority by the appropriate duty holder.

COVERAGE OF PROFESSIONAL STATUS (Annual update expected)

Additional comments on coverage of professionnal status

Codes:

y Professional status fully covered
n Professional status not covered at all
p Professional status partially covered
n.a. Not applicable, i.e. professional status does not exist in country

COVERAGE OF ACCIDENTS OUTSIDE PREMISES (Annual update expected)

Additional comments on coverage of accidents outside premises

Codes:

y Accidents fully covered
n Accidents not covered at all
p Accidents partially covered
F Data of fatal road traffic accidents and fatal accidents on board of any means of transport provided in the main CSV data file
A Data of fatal and non-fatal road traffic accidents as well as fatal and non-fatal accidents on board of any means of transport provided in the main CSV data file

All accidents at work recorded in the Republic of Ireland are reported to ESAW. 

Regions are recorded by NUTS: Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics.

Data are available 2004 onwards. 

Not applicable.

Ireland's Health and Safety Authority provide only the number of accidents and, in a separate file, reference population data from Ireland's Central Statistics Office detailing the number of male and female workers in the major NACE sectors.

The calendar year during which the accidents were reported to have taken place.

Regulation 59 of Part X on the ‘Notification of Accidents and Dangerous Occurrences’ of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations, 1993 (S.I. 44 of 1993) requires all duty holders to report work-related injuries that resulted in an absence of work greater than three days to the Health and Safety Authority - http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1993/si/44/made/en/print

This requirement has been in place since 1993 and originally came under the scope of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989. When the 1989 Act was repealed and the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 2005 came into force, the provisions of Part X of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations, 1993 (S.I. 44 of 1993) continued to apply under section 4(4) of the 2005 Act which states:
'Subject to subsection (3), in so far as any instrument (including any order or regulation) made or issued and any other thing done under an existing enactment set out in Part 1 of Schedule 2 is in force immediately before the repeal of such enactment by subsection (2) could have been made, issued or done under a corresponding provision of this Act, it shall not be invalidated by the repeals effected by subsection (2) but, except in so far as this Act otherwise provides, shall continue in force as if made, issued or done under this Act'.

The link to the 2005 Act is: http://www.hsa.ie/eng/Legislation/Acts/Safety_Health_and_Welfare_at_Work/SI_No_10_of_2005.pdf

Not applicable.

Section 73 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 2005 prohibits HSA staff from the unauthorised disclosure of confidential information. See link http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2005/act/10/enacted/en/pdf

The Data Protection Act. See link: http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1988/act/25/enacted/en/html

The Official Secrets Act - see linkL http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1963/act/1/enacted/en/html

The HSA will sign a commitment to compliance with the Irish Statistical Code of Practice in 2023.

This includes provision on confidentiality. http://www.isscop.ie/media/isscopie/documents/ISSCOP,leaflet,single,pages.pdf

Not applicable.

The data is generally published before the 1st July each year.
N+1 for data collected by the Health and Safety Authority.
N+2 for the data collected by the Central Statistics Office, Ireland’s NSI.

Not available.

An annual Statistics Report is published by Ireland's HSA, i.e., Health and Safety Authority. This report is available on the HSA website for any member of the public:
http://www.hsa.ie/eng/Publications_and_Forms/Publications/Corporate/

These data are publicised with press releases featuring key items from the reports.

Co-operation with Ireland's Central Statistics Office in making data tables available is ongoing.

Statistics Reports are disseminated annually.

Press releases are issued at appropriate times during each year.

For example, (1) a press release is produced to correspond with the publication of the annual 'Annual Review of Workplace Injury, Illness and Fatality Statistics',

(2) in the event that a number of fatalities occur in a given sector within a short interval, a press release may issue to alert relevant persons,

(3) an end of year press release is issued detailing the fatalities which occurred that year.

These are just three selected examples of the type of press releases produced.
http://www.hsa.ie/eng/News_Events_Media/Archive/Press_Releases/

(1) An annual 'Annual Review of Workplace Injury, Illness and Fatality Statistics' is published each year.

See some links below:

2017-2018: https://www.hsa.ie/eng/publications_and_forms/publications/corporate/hsa_stats_report_2019.pdf

2018-2019: https://www.hsa.ie/eng/publications_and_forms/publications/corporate/annual_review_of_workplace_injury_illness_and_fatality_statistics_2018-2019.pdf

2019-2020: https://www.hsa.ie/eng/publications_and_forms/publications/corporate/annual_review_of_workplace_injuries_illnesses_and_fatalities_2019-2020.pdf

2020-2021: https://www.hsa.ie/eng/topics/statistics/annual_review_of_workplace_injuries_illnesses_and_fatalities_20202021.pdf

(2) The statistics section of our website is kept up to date - see link: http://www.hsa.ie/eng/Topics/Statistics/

No current dissemination of data via online databases.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not available.

HSA data collection is based on ESAW methodology.

The HSA follows this methodology: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3859598/5926181/KS-RA-12-102-EN.PDF/56cd35ba-1e8a-4af3-9f9a-b3c47611ff1c

A copy of the methodology for the preparation of ESAW datafile can be made available on request.

The standard report on methodology for the NSI's QNHS survey can be found at this link: Surveys - CSO - Central Statistics Office

0.77 in respect of non-fatal reportable accidents.

1.0 in respect of fatal accidents.

Every fatality which occurred from 1st November 1989 to 31st December 2014 has been recoded in accordance with ESAW summary methodology 2013.

Each fatality has been coded with both mandatory and non-mandatory variables.

The HSA will sign a Commitment to the Irish Statistical System Code of Practice (ISSCoP) in 2023. The link to this code of practice is: http://www.isscop.ie/media/isscopie/documents/ISSCOP,leaflet,single,pages.pdf

Following the generation of HSA's data for Eurostat, a number of data quality checks are undertaken. These include:

- Randomly selecting a number of work-related accidents and independently checking each variable for accuracy against HSA data.

- Checking all weights by independently generating them based on stated methodology.

- Comparing the number of fatal accidents with the number stated in HSA's official Statistics Report for each economic sector. For 2013 data a discrepancy was discovered, original HSA inspectors' reports were examined, and the data were amended.

- Age of victim data are reported to HSA by age group. These are returned to Eurostat as the average of the age group, e.g. for the age group 25-34 the age 29 is recorded.

Following a work-related accident the duty holder must enter details onto the HSA's online injury reporting system. This may lead to inaccuracy in data as duty holders may not input the most accurate response for each variable. For example, under the heading 'type of injury' the duty holder may select 'type of injury unknown or unspecified' as opposed to inputting the actual type of injury, e.g., 'open fracture'. To minimise this inaccuracy, the HSA provides dropdown menus with simple terminology to facilitate ease of use.

A project is currently ongoing to recode all fatal work-related accidents by examining HSA inspectors' reports. This will lead to a significant improvement in the quality of fatal work-related accident data.

The mandatory reporting of accidents means that coverage is high for many sectors. However it is known that accidents to self-employed persons are underreported. (Weights are generated from Ireland's Central Statistics Office's Quarterly National Household Survey to give a more accurate picture of accidents to self-employed persons.) This contributes to under reporting in certain sectors with high proportions of self-employed workers, e.g., Accommodation and Food, Agriculture.

Data are used by academic researchers, students, media, unions, trade / industrial associations employers and employers organisations, etc.

Some data are published in annual Statistics Reports and these are freely available for members of the public.

Key data is published on the HSA website. http://www.hsa.ie/eng/Topics/Statistics/

Raw data isn't available at present. We are currently working towards publishing tables similar to those published on the EUROSTAT database.

We don't have formal measures of user satisfaction but we are responsive to informal suggestions of our data users.

All mandatory variables are collected. The following phase III variables are not collected:

- Working process
- Specific Physical Activity
- Material Agent (of the Specific Physical Activity)
- Material Agent (associated with the Deviation)
- Working station

Phase 1: 100%
Phase 2: 100%
Phase 3: 44%

REPORTING LEVELS OF ECONOMIC SECTORS (NACE), (Annual update expected)

Global reporting level

Reporting levels by sector

Additional comments on global reporting level

Codes:

N sector not covered by data collection
UNK sector covered but unknown reporting level
(value %) reporting level
(e) rough estimate (instead of "medium" or "high")

Coverage
The mandatory reporting of accidents means that coverage is total for every sector and employment status with the exception of NACE U.

Reporting
Under-reporting is prevalent for self-employed persons and also occurs in a number of sectors. To account for this, weights are generated from Ireland's Central Statistics Office's, Quarterly National Household Survey to give a more accurate picture of the actual incidence of accidents.

Accuracy in coding accidents
Following a work-related accident the duty holder must enter details onto the HSA's online injury reporting system. This may lead to inaccuracy in data as duty holders may not select the most accurate response for each variable. For example, under the heading 'type of injury' the duty holder may select 'type of injury unknown or unspecified' as opposed to inputting the actual type of injury, e.g., 'open fracture'.

Survey respondents included in the CSO's work related accidents and illness module find it difficult to accurately calculate the number of working days lost due to illness and injury especially if the injury or illness lasted a long period of time. In addition, because of the rare nature of the issue in the sample (and wider population) the estimates of days lost from work related accidents and illness cannot be precisely calculated. The low incidence rate of work related accidents and illness in general also limit the accuracy of estimates we can calculate from a sample survey like the QNHS.

CSO data provided to the HSA with confidence interval calculations using Clopper Pearson adjustments (due to low prevalence of estimates).

Calmar adjustment is used to calibrate the sample to meet external estimates of non-nationals. The Calmar adjustments establishes more consistent grossing estimates for the survey calculations.

The CSO's QNHS is a 2 stage stratified sampling procedure utilising probability proportional to size (random sampling)

All mandatory variables are collected. The following non-mandatory variable are not collected:

- Working process
- Specific Physical Activity
- Material Agent (of the Specific Physical Activity)
- Material Agent (associated with the Deviation)
- Working station

See Section 13.1 

There is no under coverage for HSA data.

None for HSA data.

Not applicable for HSA data.

Duty holders may make errors in recording details about work-related accidents on the HSA online injury reporting system.

Fatal accident data is being currently re-coded from inspectors' reports for greater accuracy. It is possible that inspectors also enter mistakes in their reports; training for inspectors to record the most accurate data is hoped to take place in 2016.

A common error in the self-reported accident data was to skip the time of accident, which was then automatically entered as 12am, 00:00. This has been amended on the online injury reporting system so that time of accident is now mandatory, and it no longer defaults to 00:00.

CSO interviewers capture responses in real time using CAPI. Significant measurement error is checked when it appears as an outlier in data received by survey processing unit. Interviewers are trained annually to confirm their understanding of the questionnaire to be delivered in the field.

This is not applicable for HSA data.

The CSO survey is conducted as part of the QNHS household survey.

The main role of the survey is the quarterly employment estimates.

Non-response levels are generally low and because of the nature of the survey capture (CAPI) it is unusual for a respondent to not respond to any single questions within the survey.

Adjustments to non-response are made using CALMAR. This procedure reweights the sample propositions of individuals so that they correspond with aggregate estimates for non-nationals.

Not applicable for HSA data.

Not applicable for HSA data.

The only data editing undertaken were the entry of the age of victim for fatal accidents (as opposed to the median of an age group for other accidents).

These ages were taken from HSA inspectors' reports and cross-checked with self-reported data to ensure they correspond to the correct age group.

This editing was undertaken for 2013 data only.

Not applicable for HSA data.

Not applicable for CSO survey

Assuming N to be the reference year in which the accidents took place, N+1 for HSA data.
N+2 for NSI data.

N+2 for reporting ESAW data to EUROSTAT.

The data is generally published Nationally before the 1st July each year.

In 2015 the data was published in late June.

Time lag for HSA is six months

Time lag for CSO is 18 months

Time lag for HSA is six months

Time lag for CSO is 18 months

Ireland transmits data until June 30 of year N+2

Ireland transmits data until June 30 of year N+2

Data collection system is uniform across all regions both for HSA and CSO.

Not applicable

Data is comparable since 2004 based on NACE Rev 2 classification of economic activities.

The length of comparable ESAW data is ten years.

The HSA started to classify economic activities in NACE Rev 2 on the 1st January 2004.

Irish LFS ad-hoc module on accidents at work and other work-related health problems used NACE Rev 2 classifcation since and including 1999.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Largely coherent between HSA and CSO. 

HSA time
Ireland's accidents are reported to the HSA both online or on a paper form.

IT costs
The capital cost of software for the online system €7,000 per year and support cost is around €13,000 per annum. This gives a ICT cost of €20,000 per annum.

Hard copy reporting costs
The 4+ day accidents reported on the paper form have to be inputted by clerical officers and is calculated to amount to 17.5 weeks a year of clerical officer time at a cost of €12,500.

The annual printing costs for the paper accident reporting forms is €340

Preparation of EUROSTAT annual return
The preparation of the annual return to EUROSTAT takes approximately 13 days of a contractor's time at a cost of €1,845.

Reporting burden to workplaces
In 2013, 6,461 4+ day accidents were reported to the HSA. It is estimated that each form would take a minimum of 15 minutes to complete.

The average number of hours worked per worker in Ireland in 2013 was 1,815 (https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS) and the average annual total labour costs per worker was €41,433 = €22.83 per hour. (http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/elca/earningsandlabourcostsannualdata2013/) => 1,615 hours of worker time were required = €36,876

Total estimated cost
Total estimated cost = €20,000 + €12,840 + 36,876 + €1,845 = €71,561*

*This covers some direct costs for the collection of data but doesn't cover costs associated with managers (ICT or manager for hard copy report inputting), office rents, heat, lighting, use of data, or cost of HSA IT staff.

A project is currently ongoing to recode all fatal work-related accidents by examining HSA inspectors' reports.

This is in response to issues with the accuracy of data entered by duty-holders and will lead to higher quality data for fatal accidents.

CSO has a general revision policy available on CSO website - http://www.cso.ie/en/index.html

See 17.1.

None for CSO

Not applicable for HSA data.

Not applicable for CSO survey

In Ireland there is a requirement on all duty holders to report work-related injuries that prevent any person in employment from performing their normal work for more than three consecutive days to the Health and Safety Authority.

Data released to ESAW are therefore based on this administrative data source. The link to reporting requirements can be found here:

General Application Regulations 2007 - Health and Safety Authority (hsa.ie)

In addition to this, our police inform us of every work related fatality within hours of occurrence. The police regularly also inform us of work accidents where the victim is seriously injured.

The Central Statistics Office, Ireland's NSI, conducts an annual an ad hoc safety and health module as part of their Quarterly National Household Survey. This module gathers information on accidents at work by the main NACE sectors. The QNHS sample is a stratified sample which divides the population by region, age and sex from estimates derived from Irelands 5 year census of population. Each quarterly sample is made up of 5 WAVE's. The questionnaire on work related accidents and illness is asked of all direct respondents who are classified as being in employment at the time of the interview. The sample is then grossed to calculate estimates of work related accidents and illness as a proportion of the working poulation of adults in the 1st quarter of each year. In 2022 a gross sample of approx 400 were included in the work related accidents and illness module.

HSA data are gathered continuously. The Central Statistics Office's QNHS module is a quarterly survey usually conducted in Q1 of the calendar year.

The QNHS data is collected in Q2 in the years of the EUROSTAT LFS module of the same topic.

Duty-holders use the HSA's online Injury Reporting System, selecting from drop-down menus for each of the variables, to describe accidents at work:
https://webapps.hsa.ie/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2f

A hard copy incident report form is also available for duty holders who prefer this. Work related accidents are also reported by Police to HSA.

The Central Statistics Office survey is conducted by interviewers calling to households included in the sample design. Face to face surveys utilising CAPI are then conducted with householders. Because of the intimate nature of the topics in the work related accidents and illness module, only information from direct interviews are captured. The CSO questionnaire design for work related accidents is repeated annually and has not changed significantly except during LFS adhoc module years (the last being 2013)

Tables were generated to explore each of the variables alone and in conjunction with other variables to find outliers and unexpected results.

The HSA injury reporting system only allows users to select age groups of injured persons, not ages. These age groups are reported to ESAW as averages, e.g. for the age group 25-34, the average age 29 is reported. For fatal accidents, original documentation regarding the accidents was consulted for the 2013 data and the correct ages were entered. This is the case for 2013 data only.

Five cases were selected at random from the data to be returned to ESAW and compared with the original recorded data to confirm that the data had been transmitted faithfully.

It is known that accidents to self-employed persons are under-reported. Weights are generated using the CSO's QNHS module on work-related accidents to ameliorate this under-reporting. These weights are created using HSA software and checked independently by applying the weighting methodology.

The number of fatal accidents was compared with the number reported in HSA's own annual Statistical Report. Discrepancies were investigated and changes made following consultation of Investigating inspectors' documentation if necessary.

The HSA's online injury reporting system is designed to capture each of the relevant variables and missing data should not exist.

With the 2013 accidents at work data, three accidents had missing geographic locations. These were amended after consulting original documentation and the error with software was fixed.

Ages represent the average of age groups, with the exception in 2013 data of fatal accidents, as described in 18.4.

Weights are generated for HSA using the Central Statistics Office's Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) using the following methodology:

- Calculation of reporting rate:

(HSA 4+ day accidents in sector /CSO number reported injuries in sector) * 100

- Calculation of weighting factor:
(1/reporting rate) * 100

Data captured as part of the Central Statistics Office survey is validated and checked for quality and consistency. Outliers are checked by contacting individual interviweres for validation and anual year to year checks confirm the broad consistency of the survey estimates.Weights are calculated and validated against gross estimates of region,sex, age categories and employment status. Calmar adjustments take place to calibrate for non-national sample bias on the main QNHS.

Not applicable for HSA data. Not applicable for CSO survey

Currently, no adjustment is made for HSA data.

Not applicable for HSA data. Not applicable for CSO survey

We are satisfied that the relevant information has been inputted into the appropriate chapters of this quality report.