What Is a Safety Statement?
Every employer in Ireland must have a written Safety Statement. Here is exactly what it is, what the law requires it to contain, who needs one, and how it connects to your risk assessments.
The Safety Statement: a uniquely Irish requirement
If you employ anyone in Ireland, you are legally required to have a written Safety Statement. It is one of the cornerstones of Irish workplace law, set out in section 20 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. Unlike a risk assessment, which exists in many countries under different names, the Safety Statement is a specific, named document that the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) can ask to see at any time.
In short, a Safety Statement is your written declaration of how you manage health and safety. It explains the hazards in your workplace, the risks they create, and exactly what you are doing to protect the people affected.
What the Act says
Section 20 requires every employer to prepare a written statement, based on the identification of hazards and the risk assessment carried out under section 19. The two sections work as a pair: section 19 is the assessment, and section 20 is the document that records and communicates it.
The Safety Statement is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the document that proves you have thought about safety, made decisions, and assigned responsibility for carrying them out.
What a Safety Statement must contain
The 2005 Act and the General Application Regulations 2007 set out what the document needs to cover. A compliant Safety Statement should include:
- The hazards identified and the risk assessment of each.
- The protective and preventive measures taken, and the resources provided to manage safety.
- The names or job titles of people with specific safety responsibilities.
- The arrangements for consulting employees and the role of any safety representative.
- The plans for emergencies, serious dangers, first aid and reporting accidents.
- The cooperation needed from employees to keep the workplace safe.
Crucially, it must be specific to your workplace. A generic statement bought off the shelf and never adapted is not a defence — it is evidence of neglect.
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Who needs one
Every employer needs a Safety Statement, regardless of size. There is a limited exception: businesses with three or fewer employees may, in certain low-risk circumstances, follow an HSA-approved code of practice instead of preparing a full statement. For almost everyone else, the written Safety Statement is mandatory from the first employee.
It must also be brought to the attention of employees — at induction, at least annually, and whenever it is revised. A statement locked in a drawer that no one has read does not meet the legal standard. Where relevant, the parts that affect contractors, agency workers or visitors should be communicated to them too, in a form they can understand. If you employ people who do not read English easily, the HSA expects you to take reasonable steps to make the content accessible to them.
How it links to risk assessment
This is where many people get confused, so it is worth being precise. The risk assessment is the analytical work: identifying hazards and judging their risks under section 19. The Safety Statement is the wider document that contains those assessments and wraps them in your overall safety policy, responsibilities and emergency arrangements under section 20.
You cannot write a meaningful Safety Statement without first carrying out the risk assessments. If you would like a refresher on that underlying work, see our guides on how to write a risk assessment in Ireland and the five steps to risk assessment.
Keeping it current
A Safety Statement is a living document. It must be reviewed when circumstances change — new equipment, new processes, an accident, or simply the passage of time. The HSA expects employers to keep it up to date and to be able to show that the controls described are actually in place. Failing to have an adequate, current Safety Statement is not a technicality: an HSA inspector who finds one missing or out of date can issue improvement and prohibition notices, and persistent failures can lead to prosecution under the 2005 Act. Treating the document as a genuine management tool, rather than a one-off chore, is by far the safest and simplest approach.
Key takeaways
- The Safety Statement is a legal requirement under section 20 of the 2005 Act — uniquely Irish in this form.
- It records your hazards, risk assessments, controls, responsibilities and emergency plans.
- Almost every employer needs one, from the first employee.
- It must be specific to your workplace and communicated to staff.
- It builds directly on the section 19 risk assessment and must be kept up to date.
Understanding the Safety Statement is essential for anyone responsible for compliance in an Irish workplace. Training in risk assessment gives you the foundation to prepare and maintain one with confidence.
