Key finding: construction fatalities went 11 in 2023, down to 5 in 2024, then back up to 10 in 2025. The widely reported doubling is real, but read across three years it is a rebound from a record-low year, not a new peak.

This page is general information based on official data, not legal advice. Every case is different and outcomes vary. Consult a qualified solicitor for advice specific to your situation.

How many people die in construction accidents in Ireland?

According to the Health and Safety Authority (January 2026), 10 construction-sector workers died in work-related incidents in Ireland in 2025 on a provisional basis, double the 5 recorded in 2024.^[1] These figures are provisional and subject to change as cases are confirmed. The 5 deaths in 2024 came in the year Ireland reached its lowest ever work-related fatality rate.^[2]

Construction sat second among all sectors by number of deaths in 2025, behind agriculture. The 10 construction fatalities made up roughly 17% of the 58 work-related deaths recorded across the whole economy that year.^[1] For anyone affected, these numbers sit behind a wider question this site addresses in depth: how an injured worker or a bereaved family can understand and pursue compensation for injury in Ireland.

The three-year trend: 11, then 5, then 10

The single most important piece of context is missing from most coverage. Headlines reported that construction deaths doubled in 2025, which is accurate against the 2024 figure. The fuller picture spans three years. Construction recorded 11 deaths in 2023, fell to 5 in 2024, then rose to 10 in 2025. So the 2025 total, while double 2024, still sits just below 2023. The doubling reflects how unusually low 2024 was, rather than a climb to a new high.

An earlier provisional count put construction deaths at ten for 2023, and the Authority used that figure in its January 2025 comparison. The confirmed 2023 annual report later recorded eleven construction deaths. This page uses the confirmed figure of eleven.

Read across three years rather than two, the 2025 rise looks like a reversal of a single good year, not a climb to a new peak. The longer record reinforces this. A total of 48 construction workers died in the five years to the end of 2024, and 95 died across the decade from 2012 to 2021. The sector has carried a persistent fatality burden for a long time, and one record-low year did not change the underlying pattern.

The national fatality rate rose from 1.3 in 2024 to 2.1 per 100,000 workers in 2025. The Authority noted that the long-term trend across the previous decade remained downward despite the 2025 increase. Construction sat between 7 and 11 deaths a year across this period, with 2024 the clear low point.

The longer record tells the clearest story. Across every multi-year window the Authority and its construction safety committee have published, construction has carried a steady toll. The table below collects those windows in one place, which no competitor and no single official page currently does.

These windows overlap and are not additive. Read together, they show a sector that has lost roughly nine to ten workers a year for over a decade, which is the context the single-year doubling headline leaves out. The pattern runs deeper still. The Authority's review of construction-related fatal accidents found that of the 1,616 work-related deaths reported between 1989 and 2016, over a quarter involved construction work, the largest share of any activity.^[8] The Authority has also noted that falls from height caused 49% of construction deaths in the five years from 2016 to 2020.^[12]

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Most common causes of fatalities on construction sites

Falls from height are the defining hazard of Irish construction. According to a Health and Safety Authority all-island campaign (2025), 70 construction workers died from falls from height across the island of Ireland between 2015 and 2024.^[3] Falls from height were the leading single cause of construction deaths in 2023. Unsecured scaffolding, unguarded edges, fragile roofs, and ladder work account for most of these incidents.

Two further hazards dominate. According to the Health and Safety Authority (January 2026), being struck by a vehicle and being hit or crushed by a heavy or falling load each caused 14 deaths across all sectors in 2025, and falls from height caused 9.^[1] On building sites these map onto reversing plant, loads slung from cranes or telehandlers, and excavation work. The Authority's chief executive said the continued prevalence of these well-known triggers shows they are not being adequately controlled.

Each of these hazards has its own detailed guide on this site. You can read more about falls from height, accidents involving ladders and scaffolding, and a machinery accident at work. Those pages explain how each type of accident happens and what duties apply.

Where do most construction accidents happen in Ireland?

Fatalities cluster in a handful of counties each year, though the leaders shift as the small annual numbers move. In 2025, Dublin, Cork, and Donegal each recorded six work-related deaths across all sectors, the joint-highest in the country.^[10] In 2024, Cork, Dublin, and Offaly led with three each.^[2] Dublin and Cork recur near the top, which reflects both their larger workforces and the concentration of construction activity around the cities.

These totals cover all sectors, not construction alone, because the Authority does not publish a county-by-sector split. They remain a useful geographic guide and show where work-related risk concentrates.

How construction compares with other sectors

Construction is dangerous, but it is not the most dangerous sector in Ireland by number of deaths. Agriculture holds that position by a wide margin. According to the Health and Safety Authority (January 2026), farming accounted for 23 deaths in 2025, around 40% of all work-related fatalities, from a sector employing roughly 4% of the workforce.^[1] Construction recorded 10 deaths from a workforce share closer to 7 to 8%.

So construction is over-represented relative to its size, but the disproportion is far less extreme than agriculture's. The scale of that over-representation is not new. When the Construction Safety Partnership Advisory Committee set its 2022 to 2024 plan, it noted that construction made up around 6% of the working population in 2021 yet accounted for 26% of all workplace fatalities that year.^[12] The Law Society Gazette (2022) has reported that the construction injury rate has at times run at around four times that of other sectors, which underlines that the sector's risk is real even where the absolute death count sits below farming.^[7] You can see the full national breakdown across every sector on our workplace accident and fatality statistics in Ireland page.

The workforce denominator matters when reading these numbers. Central Statistics Office figures put construction employment at roughly 190,000 people by mid-2025, after the sector added about 29,600 workers in a single year, a rise of around 18%. A growing, busier workforce raises exposure, and Economic and Social Research Institute research has long linked construction booms to higher injury rates as activity outpaces supervision. Ten deaths from a workforce of that size keeps construction well above the all-sector average rate, even as agriculture remains the clear outlier.

Non-fatal construction injuries and the problem of under-reporting

Fatalities are the visible tip of a much larger figure. Across all sectors, 10,441 non-fatal workplace incidents were reported to the Authority in 2024, a 3% rise on 2023 and 14% above the five-year average.^[5] The construction share of formally reported non-fatal injuries was about 7% of the national total in 2024.

The reported figure understates reality. The Authority itself acknowledges that its non-fatal database is limited by chronic under-reporting, which is most pronounced among smaller firms and the self-employed. When official reports are compared with the broader Central Statistics Office Labour Force Survey, the survey consistently records substantially more workplace injuries than the formal reporting system captures, often close to double in a given year. The most common triggers for reported non-fatal construction injuries are slipping and falling, manual handling, and loss of control of an object, machine, or vehicle. The back is the most frequently injured body part across all sectors, linked to about 26% of reported non-fatal incidents.

A claim can still proceed where an employer failed to formally log an accident. The reporting duty sits with the employer, and a failure to report does not remove an injured worker's right to pursue a claim. This site explains slip and fall at work claims and what to do when an employer has not reported an accident in more detail.

Who is most at risk in construction

Three groups stand out in the data. According to the Health and Safety Authority (January 2026), self-employed workers accounted for 40% of all work-related deaths in Ireland in 2025, despite making up a smaller share of the workforce.^[1] The construction sub-contractor model concentrates this risk, because layers of self-employed sole traders dilute who holds responsibility for safety on a busy site.

Older workers are the second group. Almost a third of all 2025 fatalities, 19 of 58, involved workers aged 65 or over, and the oldest was 88.^[1] The physical demands of construction increasingly fall on a workforce whose balance and recovery decline with age, so a fall that might injure a younger worker can be fatal for an older one. Migrant workers form a third group, where language barriers around safety documentation and training can raise risk where employers do not provide materials a worker can understand.

These patterns matter for liability, because agency workers and sub-contractors often face disputes about who is responsible. Where several firms share a site, third-party contractor liability can determine who an injured worker claims against.

HSA construction safety action and the law

The Authority and the industry run a joint response. In July 2025 the Construction Safety Partnership Advisory Committee published its Action Plan 2025 to 2027, bringing together unions, the Construction Industry Federation, and the Authority to standardise safe practice and target risks for new entrants, returning workers, and small or self-employed contractors.^[4] The Authority also runs an all-island work-at-height campaign jointly addressing construction and farming, the two sectors where falls from height cause most deaths.

The core legal duties come from the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013. These place duties on employers, main contractors, and site operators to plan work safely, control well-known hazards, and protect everyone on site. The duty of an employer is set out in plain terms on our employer duty of care guide.

One point causes regular confusion. The UK's RIDDOR regime, often cited in cross-border searches, has no legal force in the Republic of Ireland. Irish employers report qualifying accidents to the Health and Safety Authority on the IR1 form, not under RIDDOR, where a worker is unable to carry out their normal work for more than three consecutive days. A failure to report under the Irish rules can support a negligence finding, but the Irish reporting framework, not the UK one, is what applies here.

Construction also has its own structure of named duty-holders. The Construction Regulations place specific responsibilities on the client, the Project Supervisor for the Design Process, the Project Supervisor for the Construction Stage, and contractors on site. This layered structure is part of why responsibility after a construction accident can involve several parties rather than a single employer.

Prosecutions and enforcement after construction deaths

A work-related death can lead to a criminal prosecution of the responsible business, separate from any civil claim by the injured worker or the family. The Health and Safety Authority brings these cases, and construction features heavily in its enforcement activity. According to the Health and Safety Authority 2023 Annual Report, the Authority concluded 19 prosecutions across all sectors in 2023, with fines totalling 1,377,500 euro.^[11] The single largest fine that year, 750,000 euro, was imposed at Dublin Circuit Court after a man died falling through a fragile surface, an outcome the court found should have been prevented by proper controls.^[11]

Construction attracts a disproportionate share of enforcement notices short of prosecution. Of the prohibition notices the Authority issued in 2023, ordering dangerous work to stop, the majority were served on construction sites. These figures are public-record enforcement outcomes reported by the Authority. They are not a guide to what any individual civil claim might involve, which depends entirely on the facts of the case.

Court fine figures are stated as reported by the Health and Safety Authority and national media for the year shown. They are penalties imposed on businesses, not compensation paid to injured people.

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Key terms used in construction accident statistics

Work-related fatality

A death arising from a work activity that the Health and Safety Authority confirms as work-related. Figures are provisional until each case is confirmed.

Provisional figure

An early count published in January for the previous year. Numbers can rise as investigations conclude, so the final figure may differ.

Fatality rate

Deaths per 100,000 workers. The rate puts the raw count in proportion to the size of the workforce, which is why it can rise even when sectors differ in headcount.

NACE sector

The European classification system the Authority uses to assign each death to an economic sector, such as construction or agriculture.

References

1. Health and Safety Authority. Sharp rise in work-related fatalities in 2025 (provisional figures). HSA (Updated January 2026).
2. Health and Safety Authority. Work-related fatalities rate in Ireland reaches record low in 2024 (construction fell from 2023 to 5 in 2024). HSA (Updated January 2025).
3. Health and Safety Authority. All-island safety campaign targets deadly falls in construction and farming (70 falls-from-height deaths 2015 to 2024). HSA (Updated 2025).
4. Health and Safety Authority. Construction Safety Partnership Advisory Committee Action Plan 2025 to 2027 (48 deaths in five years to end 2024). HSA (Updated July 2025).
5. Central Statistics Office. Labour Force Survey, work-related injury and illness module, and construction-sector employment. CSO (Updated 2025).
6. RTÉ News. Sharp rise in work-related deaths in 2025. RTÉ (Updated January 2026).
7. Law Society Gazette. Construction injury rate four times that of other sectors. Law Society Gazette (Updated August 2022).
8. Health and Safety Authority. Review of Construction-Related Fatal Accidents in Ireland 1989 to 2016. HSA (Updated 2016).
9. data.gov.ie. Fatal Workplace Injuries by Economic Sector 2025 (NACE Revision 2). data.gov.ie (Updated 2026).
10. Irish Times. Workplace fatalities rise dramatically (county breakdown). Irish Times (Updated January 2026).
11. Health and Safety Authority. 2023 Annual Report (19 prosecutions, fines of 1,377,500 euro, 11 construction deaths). HSA (Updated June 2024).
12. Health and Safety Authority. Construction Safety Partnership Advisory Committee Action Plan 2022 to 2024 (95 deaths 2012 to 2021, construction 6% of workforce yet 26% of fatalities in 2021). HSA (Updated February 2022).

Common questions

Related guides: Construction site accident claims · Falls from height · Ladder and scaffolding accidents · Workplace accident statistics