There has been a renewed focus on health and safety enforcement in the Irish construction sector, with the Health and Safety Authority (‘HSA’) intensifying its inspection efforts, particularly in industries identified as high-risk, such as construction. By Thompson Barry Doherty, Arthur Cox.

In an enforcement scenario, directors and senior managers must be able to demonstrate strong compliance, effective governance, and thorough oversight, or risk facing personal, in addition to corporate, liability.

When a HSA inspector arrives at your site, what happens next depends on the extent to which an organisation and its senior decision makers can demonstrate compliance with their legal duties. This article sets out what directors and managers need to understand about enforcement, the legal framework and personal liability.

The Current Landscape

Incorporating health and safety into all stages of a construction project is essential not only to ensure legal compliance but to enable safe and efficient project delivery. Construction, by its nature, is one of the highest-risk industries in Ireland – employees work in demanding physical environments, often operating heavy machinery and working at heights. As a sector, construction is frequently second only to agriculture for fatal accidents.

The sharp rise in workplace fatalities in 2025 highlights a setback for health and safety in Ireland, underscoring the importance of effective risk management across the construction sector. For context, there were 63 workplace fatalities in 2025, up from 36 in 2024 – an increase of over 75% – reversing almost two decades of progress, during which fatalities had fallen from 67 in 2007 to 36 in 2024. For the construction sector, there were 11 construction fatalities in 2025 – more than double the 2024 total of five. So far in 2026, there have been eight fatal workplace injuries, four of which are construction fatalities.

The Enforcement Response

For those operating in construction, the message is clear: enforcement activity is increasing. Importantly, an inspection can lead directly to prosecution where breaches are identified, even in the absence of an incident. Further, an inspector arriving on site, whether following a reported incident or on an ad hoc basis, can identify breaches entirely unrelated to the original reason for their visit, triggering further enforcement action. Those operating sites should not assume that because there has been no incident, there is no risk of enforcement action.

Where an inspector identifies a problem, they have several options. Two of the most significant formal tools are improvement notices and prohibition notices. An improvement notice is issued when an inspector believes a statutory provision has been contravened and it is likely that the contravention will be continued or repeated. It specifies what must be done and gives a deadline for compliance. Work can continue in the meantime, but the recipient must act within the timeframe set. A prohibition notice is more serious. It is issued when an inspector believes that there is a risk of serious personal injury. It requires the activity in question to stop immediately, or from a specified time stated in the notice. In the context of a live construction project, the commercial consequences can be significant.

Construction-Specific Duties: A Layered Framework

At the centre of the Irish health and safety framework is the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 (the ‘2005 Act’) – the foundation of the regime – which requires employers to manage workplace risks and protect the safety, health and welfare of employees and others affected by work activities.

There are three practical features of this framework that warrant emphasis. First, health and safety law sits within a criminal framework in Ireland: breaches can lead to fines and, in serious cases, imprisonment, and this is entirely separate to any civil liability for damages. Second, an incident is not a prerequisite for enforcement; as noted, a HSA inspection, including those carried out ad hoc, can identify instances of non-compliance, which may result in enforcement action. Third, and perhaps most significantly for those in senior roles: where an employer is a company, directors and managers can, in certain circumstances, be held personally liable for breaches – governance and oversight are crucial.

Ireland’s construction sector is also governed by an additional layer of regulation – the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013. These regulations impose duties on a range of specific duty holders that go beyond (but importantly do not replace) general employer obligations.

The Client (being the person or organisation commissioning the work) must appoint in writing two key supervisory roles before work begins. The Project Supervisor for the Design Process (‘PSDP’), who coordinates safety during the design phase, ensures risks are identified, eliminated or reduced before construction begins. The Project Supervisor for the Construction Stage (‘PSCS’) manages and coordinates health and safety during construction itself and is responsible for developing the construction stage safety and health plan.

These statutory appointments are not administrative formalities – they are legally mandated safeguards and the failure to make them correctly exposes clients, directors and managers to direct liability. For projects with more than one contractor, lasting more than 30 working days, involving more than 500 person-days of construction work or involving a particular risk, these appointments must be made, and the project must be notified to the HSA before work commences.

Personal Liability: Directors and Managers Are Not Exempt

One of the most important points for any director or senior manager to understand is that health and safety law does not stop at the site; it extends into the boardroom, placing clear responsibilities on senior decision makers. It is not just the company that can be prosecuted – it can be those senior decision makers personally. Under Section 80 of the 2005 Act, a director or manager can be personally prosecuted where the offence committed by the company is attributable to their authorisation, consent, connivance or neglect. There is also an important procedural point that directors should be aware of: Section 80(2) provides a presumption against a director/decision-maker in certain circumstances until the contrary is proved. Therefore, if something goes wrong, directors and managers will need to show they exercised due diligence and oversight. Recent, examples of decisions concerning personal liability for directors include the following:

• DPP for HSA v John Fletcher Limited and David Fletcher (March 2025): Both the company and its director were fined after a fatal workplace accident involving unsafe manual handling of heavy equipment, with failures to provide a safe system of work and to use mechanical aids leading to significant penalties of €400,000 for the company and €5,000 for the director.

• DPP for HSA v Solar Power BK Limited and Brian Kelly (July 2025): A director received suspended prison sentences and a personal fine of €10,000 after an employee died in a fall due to the lack of a safe system of work.

• DPP for HSA v Shay Murtagh Precast, Ciaran Murtagh and David Whyte (November 2024): Following a serious fall from a fragile roof light during solar panel installation work in which an employee suffered a skull fracture, the company was fined €125,000 and both the managing director and the health and safety manager had the Probation Act applied.

These decisions demonstrate that personal liability extends not only to those who are present on site, but who are in charge of works, and whose neglect or oversight failures contribute to a breach. For directors and managers operating in the construction sector, the question is not whether an inspector might call, it is whether, when one does, the systems, documentation and culture of safety in place are robust enough to withstand scrutiny.

Author: Thompson Barry Doherty, Associate, Arthur Cox  www.arthurcox.com

Follow Irish building magazine on LinkedIn for the latest news and updates.