Health & Safety Consultancy

Legislative Framework

Irish health and safety legislation places clear duties on employers to protect their employees and others affected by their work activities. Our consultancy services support compliance with all relevant legislation.

Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005

The primary legislation requiring employers to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of employees. Employers must prepare a written safety statement based on risk assessment, identify hazards, implement control measures, and provide information, instruction, and training. Non-compliance can result in HSA enforcement action, fines, and prosecution. View on Irish Statute Book

General Application Regulations 2007

Detailed requirements for specific workplace hazards including manual handling, display screen equipment, personal protective equipment, work at height, electricity, and emergency procedures. These regulations set out the practical steps employers must take to manage specific risks. View on Irish Statute Book

Our Consultants

Our health and safety consultants are Chartered Members of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (CMIOSH), the gold standard qualification for health and safety professionals requiring degree-level education and substantial practical experience.

With over 25 years of experience across all sectors in Ireland, Phoenix STS provides practical, proportionate consultancy that works in real-world operations. All consultancy services are covered by comprehensive professional indemnity insurance.

Nationwide Health & Safety Consultancy

Phoenix STS provides health and safety consultancy services throughout Ireland. Based in Longford with nationwide coverage, our CMIOSH qualified consultants work with businesses of all sizes across offices, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, construction, healthcare, and public sector organisations in all 26 counties.

What a useful consultancy visit should produce

Good health and safety consultancy should leave the employer with usable decisions, not a folder of general wording. Phoenix STS starts with how the organisation actually works: who is on site, what work is carried out, what contractors do, how visitors or service users may be affected, and where the main exposure sits. That may be a workshop, office, care setting, retail premises, warehouse, construction-related activity or a mixed-use site. The advice then connects the legal duty to the daily arrangements that managers and staff can follow.

In Irish workplaces the core duties come from the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. Employers must manage work safely, provide information, instruction, training and supervision, appoint competent support where needed, and prepare arrangements for emergencies and serious and imminent danger. A consultant cannot remove those duties from the employer. What Phoenix STS can do is identify the gaps, explain the level of risk, help set priorities and prepare the documents or systems needed to manage the work properly.

Where consultancy usually adds value

Many clients contact us because something has changed. They may be opening a new site, taking on more staff, responding to an insurer request, preparing for an HSA inspection, tendering for work, introducing contractors, or trying to bring several informal arrangements into one management system. In those cases, consultancy is most useful when it links the practical controls together: risk assessments, safety statements, policies, training records, contractor controls, emergency procedures and management review.

We also help where a business has documents already but no one is confident they reflect the work. A safety statement copied from another business, a risk assessment that has not been reviewed since the premises changed, or a policy that staff have never seen will not give strong evidence of active management. Our review looks for the difference between paper compliance and arrangements that are visible on the floor: named responsibilities, current records, realistic controls, and staff who understand what applies to their job.

What we normally review

A consultancy review may cover hazard identification, workplace layout, manual handling, slips and trips, work at height, display screen equipment, lone working, first aid, fire and evacuation arrangements, chemical controls, welfare facilities, vulnerable workers, young persons, driving for work, contractor management and incident reporting. We keep the scope proportionate. A small office does not need the same depth as a healthcare provider, logistics site or manufacturing premises, but every employer needs a clear way to identify risk, control it and keep the evidence current.

The output is agreed before the work starts. It may be a short gap report, a full consultancy report, updated risk assessments, a revised safety statement, bespoke policies, a training matrix, an action plan or support preparing for external audit. Recommendations are prioritised so that immediate safety issues are separated from improvements that can be planned over time. Where follow-up support is needed, we can also help managers assign owners, timescales and evidence requirements rather than leaving the report to sit unread.

Implementation support after the report

The most common failure after a consultancy review is not a lack of advice; it is a lack of ownership. Phoenix STS therefore separates recommendations into actions that can be closed quickly, actions that need management approval and actions that depend on training, maintenance, contractors or budget. That structure helps the employer avoid a long list of findings with no clear route to completion.

Where required, we can support the implementation stage through management briefings, document updates, site walk-throughs, training needs reviews and follow-up checks. For clients with several premises, we can also help create a consistent approach without pretending every site is identical. The aim is to leave the organisation with evidence it can maintain: current risk assessments, a usable safety statement, practical policies, staff communication records, inspection records and a live action tracker.

This matters for insurers, tender submissions and external audits as well as HSA inspections. A business that can show how actions were identified, assigned, completed and reviewed is in a stronger position than one that only has a report. Consultancy should improve control of risk, but it should also improve the employer?s ability to explain how health and safety is managed when someone asks for evidence.

Keeping the support proportionate

Not every employer needs the same level of consultancy. A small office may need a focused review, a clean safety statement and a small number of specific assessments. A higher-risk site may need a deeper review of workplace transport, contractors, work equipment, chemical controls, occupational health and emergency arrangements. We scale the work to the level of risk, the size of the organisation and the evidence the client actually needs.

That proportional approach keeps the service useful. It avoids turning a modest workplace into an audit exercise, but it also prevents larger or higher-risk employers from relying on documents that are too thin for their operations. The final advice should be clear enough for managers to act on and detailed enough to stand up to insurer, client or regulator questions.

Further Reading

Read our guide on safety statements in Ireland for a detailed explanation of the legal requirements under Section 20 of the SHWW Act 2005. We provide health and safety consultancy across Ireland, including Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Limerick.