Building sites across Dublin are expected to close today as workers join a protest march from Liberty Hall to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The march was called following the death of a carpenter, Mr Timothy Kelliher (56), on Friday at a site in Dublin docklands.
Meanwhile, SIPTU and the Construction Industry Federation's safety experts have clashed on whether accident rates in the sector are improving. The union's safety and health adviser, Mr Sylvester Cronin, said yesterday the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, needed to take urgent action against employers who did not take their responsibilities seriously.
He said modest progress had been made on sites, but it was `totally misleading" to argue that fatality rates had halved. "In the 1980s there was an average of less than seven people killed each year. By the mid1990s this rose to an average of 10 fatalities each year and further increased to 18 in the late 1990s and remained at that level in 2000," he said.
Earlier the CIF's director of safety, environment and training services, Mr Peter McCabe, said fatality rates in construction had fallen from 16.8 per 100,000 workers in 1998 to 8.4 per in 2000. "By the end of this year the fatality rate should be well below 2000 levels."