The IMPACT union has asked its members to boycott a reception being held tonight, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Health and Safety Authority.
The union's assistant general secretary, Mr Matt Staunton, said there was "no reason for celebration because of the increasing number of workplace accidents and death". He wrote to the Minister of State for Labour, Mr Tom Kitt, last week to tell him that the union's Health and Safety Authority branch had asked its members not to attend.
Mr Kitt will be attending the event at the National Gallery in Dublin.
The HSA's director-general, Mr Tom Walsh, said last night he was disappointed that IMPACT members had been asked by their union not to attend. However, he stressed the event was not meant to be a celebration.
"It will be quite a low-key affair," he said. "Over the past 10 years an awful lot of people have worked with the authority on a voluntary basis, advising us and helping us draw up programmes and schemes. The event is really being held to thank them."
He also rejected IMPACT's assertion that there was a trend within the HSA away from inspection and enforcement and that it had "failed to prioritise safety inspections".
"Not at all," said Mr Walsh. "If anything, the authority is increasing its level of enforcement." He said he knew there was "some talk" about inadequate resources being put into work-safety inspections, but he said "the Minister [Mr Kitt] has been working on that and just in the last few weeks new staff have taken up positions with the authority."
Some 70 people died in workplace accidents last year - 48 of them in the construction and agriculture industries. The figure compares with a total of 48 killed at work in 1997. The authority carried out 11,335 workplace inspections in 1998, compared with 11,156 in 1997 and 10,944, five years earlier, in 1992.
