Fire safety training is not just good practice. In Ireland, it is a legal requirement for almost every employer. Understanding exactly what the law expects helps you protect your staff and avoid the risk of falling short of your obligations.
In this post, we break down what Irish law requires, in plain terms, and what that means for your organisation in practice.
Your duty to assess fire risk
Under Section 19 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, employers must carry out a risk assessment to identify hazards and assess risks in the workplace, including fire risks. This is the starting point for any fire safety programme.
A risk assessment on its own does not prevent fires. It only tells you where the risks sit. If a fire broke out tomorrow, would your staff know their nearest fire exit, their designated assembly point or which extinguisher to reach for? A risk assessment cannot answer those questions. Training does.
Your duty to train employees
Sections 8, 9 and 10 of the same Act go further. They place a legal duty on employers to provide employees with sufficient information, training and supervision to keep them safe at work, and fire safety falls squarely within that duty.
In practice, this means employees need training that covers:
- The main causes of fire in the workplace
- Types of flammable materials and how to store them safely
- The fire prevention triangle and how to break it
- How to identify different classes of fire
- Which extinguisher suits which type of fire
- Evacuation procedures specific to your workplace
Choosing the wrong extinguisher for a fire can make the situation worse rather than better, so this is not a box ticking exercise. Staff genuinely need to understand the difference.
What this means in practice
Meeting these duties usually means running a structured fire safety course for all staff, refreshed on a regular basis as people join your organisation or as your premises change. Delivering this consistently across a team, particularly a large or dispersed one, is where many employers struggle.
How eLearning helps you meet these duties
Delivering fire safety training through eLearning makes it far easier to meet your legal obligations consistently. It gives every employee the same standard of training, lets you track completion for compliance records and removes the need to coordinate everyone into a single room at the same time.
Our Basic Fire Safety eLearning course is built to help you meet these legal requirements, with content that can also be tailored to reflect risks specific to your own premises. It can be hosted on our systems or delivered through your own LMS.
