Permission to film on public roads must be obtained from Dublin City Council’s Roads and Traffic Department and the Office of the Garda Assistant Commissioner, Dublin Metropolitan Region, Harcourt Street headquarters. Dublin City Council may also require the applicant to notify specific local Garda Stations. The Office of the Garda Assistant Commissioner, may also instruct the applicant Production Company and relevant local Garda Station on policing requirements. The legal requirement for road closure orders must be complied with.

Permission must be sought from both Dublin City Council, Roads and Traffic Department and the Office of the Garda Assistant Commissioner for the following:

1. Full or partial road closures, lane closures and full or partial footpath closures. The production company as part of any road closure application must submit a traffic management plan.
2. The removal, alteration and disguising of street furniture. Reinstatement must happen as soon as possible after filming.
3. The temporary painting-out or disguising of road markings, yellow lines or other road signs, again reinstatement must happen as soon as possible after filming.
4. The use of cranes, cherry pickers, track, low-loaders and other potentially hazardous equipment in a public place.
5. The parking of production vehicles on yellow lines, in meter bays or residents’ bays.
6. The use of special effects, pyrotechnics or explosions, rain or snow machines, wet downs and stunt work on public footpaths or carriageways.
7. Wet downs of streets.
8. The removal of street furniture, including signs.

The adjustment of street lighting is normally carried out by Dublin City Council and charged to the production company. All arrangements for this work must be made through the Dublin City Council, Public Lighting Department. For more information contact:

Dublin City Council, Public Lighting Services, 61/64 Marrowbone Lane, Dublin 8.

Tel: +353 (0) 1 222 2222, Email: [email protected]

What is a safety statement?

A safety statement is your written commitment to managing safety and health in your business and how you are going to do this.

It should include:

• your health and safety policy;
• the results of your risk assessments;
• the names and job titles of those appointed to be responsible for any safety and health matters;
• the duties of employers and employees, including the co-operation required from employees on safety and health matters;
• your commitment to employee consultation and participation, including arrangements for appointing safety representatives;
• your welfare arrangements;
• your plans and procedures for dealing with emergencies;
• your arrangements to ensure the safety of young persons, pregnant employees and visitors to the workplace or anyone else who may be affected by your work activities;
• your personal protective equipment policy and register of equipment;
• your first aid and fire safety procedures, and details about the equipment and facilities available;
• your procedures for accident reporting and investigation; and
• your training records.

Your safety statement (including the risk assessments) should be brought to the attention of all employees and others at the workplace that may be exposed to any risks. This should be done at least once a year, and whenever it is changed or updated. New employees should also be made aware of your safety statement, especially the sections that may affect them directly. The statement must be in a form and language that is likely to be understood. 

What should be covered in a safety statement?

The areas that should be covered by the Safety Statement are specific and are set out in Section 20 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. The Statement should be based on the identification of the hazards and the Risk Assessments carried out under Section 19.

It must:

1. State how the safety and health of all employees will be secured and managed
2. State the hazards identified and risks assessed
3. Provide details of how the employer is going to manage their safety and health responsibilities, including a commitment to comply with legal obligations, the protective and preventive measures taken, the resources provided for safety and health at the workplace and the arrangements used to fulfil these responsibilities
4. include the plans and procedures to be used in the event of an emergency or serious danger
5. specify the duties of employees, including the co-operation required from them on safety and health matters
6. include the names and job titles of people appointed to be responsible for safety and health or for performing the tasks set out in the statement
7. contain the arrangements made for appointing safety representatives, and for consulting with and the participation by employees on safety and health matters, including the names of the safety representatives and the members of the safety committee, if appointed
8. be written in a form, manner and language that will be understood by all
9. include a review mechanism
10. have regard to the relevant safety and health legislation

The Safety Statement can refer to specific procedures contained in other documents.

Risk Assessment

Codes of Practice,

Guidance and Information Sheets where available.

Company operating instructions and procedures

What is a risk assessment?

A risk assessment is a written document that records a three-step process:

1. Identifying the hazards in the workplace(s) under your control.
2. Assessing the risks presented by these hazards.
3. Putting control measures in place to reduce the risk of these hazards causing harm.

There are five important terms you need to understand when doing a risk assessment:

Hazard: Anything with the potential to cause injury or ill health, for example chemical substances, dangerous moving machinery, or threats of violence from others.

Risk: Risk is the chance that someone will be harmed by the hazard. It also takes account of how severe the harm or ill health could be and how many people could be affected. Because risk is a combination of chance (or likelihood) and severity, it is worthwhile considering both of these terms.

Chance (or likelihood): Chance is a measure of how likely it is that an accident could happen. When people are working safely there is less chance that an accident will occur. The following diagram shows how working unsafely increases the chance that someone will be harmed.

Severity: Severity is a measure of how serious an injury or health effect could be, as a consequence of unsafe working or of an accident.

The severity can be influenced by the following:

• the environment,
• the number of people at risk, and
• the steps already taken to control the hazard.

Control Measures: Control measures are simply what steps you are going to take to remove the hazards, or at least reduce the risk of them causing harm to as low a level as possible.

Step 1: Look at the hazards. The first step is to identify all the hazards in the workplace. A hazard is anything with the potential to cause injury or ill health. Within your workplace there may be several different types of hazard:

Physical hazards, such as manual handling, slip or trip hazards, poor housekeeping, fire, working at height, working with hot items, working in cold environments, driving for work or using poorly maintained equipment.

Health hazards, such as noise, vibration, unsuitable light levels, harmful dusts or stress.

Chemical hazards, such as working with common everyday products from cleaning agents, glues and correction fluids to industrial solvents, dyes, pesticides or acids.

Human factor hazards, such as bullying by or violence from other employees or members of the public.

Some hazards are obvious, such as unguarded moving parts of machinery, dangerous fumes, electricity, working at heights, moving vehicles or moving heavy loads. Less obvious, but at the root of many accidents, are hazards presented by untidy workplaces and poor maintenance. In the case of other hazards, such as excessive noise or exposure to chemicals, it may take months or even years before ill health materialises. Once you have identified the hazards, you can start to assess the risks

Step 2: Assess the risks Risk means the likelihood that someone will be harmed by a hazard, together with the severity of the harm suffered. Risk also depends on the number of people who might be exposed to the hazard.

In assessing the risk, you should estimate:

• how likely it is that a hazard will cause harm,
• how serious that harm is likely to be, and
• how often and how many workers are exposed.

There are various methods for carrying out risk assessment which comply with the legal requirements.

Choose one which best suits your organisation

The simplest way to quantify the risk is low, medium or high:

Low risk: This is where the likelihood of an accident occurring is low and the severity is low. For example, intermittent work on a computer where the workstation is well laid out is unlikely to result in any harm to the user.

Medium risk: As the level of likelihood and severity increases, a hazard may be assessed as a medium risk. For example, manual handling of heavy loads without mechanical aids. You should use control measures to reduce these hazards to low risk.

High risk: You should focus on high risk hazards first, as there is a likelihood that an accident could occur and if it does then there could be serious injuries, ill health or death. For example, vehicles reversing where pedestrians / members of the public are walking. When assessing the risk, it is important to consider who may be exposed to a specific hazard.

Apart from direct employees, think about the people who may not be in the workplace all the time, for example:

• cleaners,
• visitors,
• other employers’ workers such as outside contractors, and
• outside maintenance personnel.

Where the public access your premises as part of the services you supply, you will need to assess the hazards that they are exposed to. Hazards could vary from slips, trips and falls to unauthorised entry to dangerous areas.

You may also need to consider vulnerable groups for which you may need to put in place additional control measures.

These vulnerable groups may include:

• young people, who may be more at risk due to their inexperience and lack of training;
• elderly people;
• pregnant, post-natal and breastfeeding employees;
• night and shift workers;
• people with language disabilities or for whom English is not a first language;
• people with different abilities or disabilities; and
• people who are handling money or dealing with the public.

Once you have looked at the hazards in your workplace and identified the level of risk, you are ready to start the final step of the process: deciding the control measures.

LOW MEDIUM HIGH LOW MEDIUM HIGH LOW MEDIUM HIGH

Decide on the control measures Common sense tells us that life cannot be totally risk free. However, employers are required to do all that is reasonably practicable to minimise the risk of injury.

Employers will have done all that is reasonably practicable if they have:

• identified the hazards and risks relating to the place of work, and
• put in place appropriate control measures such that it would be grossly disproportionate to do more. When deciding on the appropriate control measures to put in place, employers need to ask themselves:
• Can I get rid of the hazard altogether?
• Can I change the way the job is done so as to make it safer?
• If not, what safety precautions are necessary to control this risk?

Your first approach should be to eliminate the hazard from your workplace. Clearly if you get rid of a hazard, then you are making it safer for you and your employees. If you cannot eliminate a hazard then the next step is to try a safer approach.

• Night shoots in residential areas are naturally sensitive and it is essential to consider and consult with local residents and businesses as part of the planning process.
• There may be cases when equipment or heavy vehicles that cannot be removed silently at the end of filming must be left ‘in situ’ and attended by overnight security. The local Garda Station and Dublin City Council should be contacted in advance and advice should be requested with regard to night filming.
• The production company should ensure that appropriate security measures are in place when sites (i.e. sets, unit base, crew parking, stand-by vehicles parking) are not in use.
• If necessary, blackouts should be provided to residents that are affected by film lighting being used at night.