Trevor Laffan

Women have lots of good points. It would be very difficult to live without them and I don’t necessarily want to give it a shot. They have some unusual traits but we do our best to be understanding. We comfort them when they are sick or in pain even though they have never had the man-flu so they can’t possibly know what it’s like to be really sick.

Some of the things they do confuse me and I have just resigned myself to the fact that I will never understand most of them.

Shopping requires stamina

For example, when a woman wants to buy something she will walk a thousand miles and go into hundreds of shops. She’ll pick up dozens of items that she neither needs nor wants and she will feel them, squeeze them, turn them over and then put them back where she got them. It’s only after she has searched every shop in the city that she will return to the first shop she went into and buy the damn thing there.

But that’s ok, they probably enjoy it and that’s their business. But there’s something else that drives me to distraction and there is no sense to it.

Multi-tasking isn’t as easy as it sounds

You’re standing in a queue for the check-out in your local shop. The queue is moving along nicely and your turn is coming, there’s only one woman left in front of you. She’s up next and she places her bits and pieces on the counter. Then she puts her handbag on the counter as well and goes hunting in it for her purse. Then she takes out the purse and opens that and has to go rooting for her money. There are other things in the way, scraps of paper, coupons, receipts and God knows what else so they have to come out too. Then she wants to use up her change so she’s like an Archaeologist on an important dig and she goes excavating for one cent and five pieces. It has to be the exact amount. As soon as the money is handed over, the purse has to be back filled and then returned to the handbag.

All through this silliness you have to stand there and resist the urge to kill. Why is it not possible to have all this done while they are waiting in the queue? They’re always barking on about how well they can multi task but yet they can’t queue and count at the same time.

 

It’s more than a little ironic that we have the Garda Commissioner, The Minister for Justice and other politicians calling on the gardai to defer the forthcoming strike. They have been suggesting that the relationship between the gardai and the community will deteriorate if the strike goes ahead. They are concerned that the security of the State will be diminished and the lives of its citizens will be put at risk. They claim that it will be very difficult for them to provide a proper service to the public with the reduced resources that will be available to them in the event of a strike. They are concerned about the long term effect that this dispute will have on the State.

Has the penny finally dropped?

It’s wonderful to see this new found interest in the role of An Garda Siochana. It’s also wonderful that, at last, many of them have come to realise what it is like to run a police force with limited resources. It’s good too that they seem, for the first time in years, to be concerned about the long term future of An Garda Siochana as opposed to just looking as far as the next election or the next promotion list. They have been told this on a daily basis for years but have chosen to deny that there is an issue and it has taken this threat of strike action to bring it home.

Lay the blame where it belongs

Noirin O’Sullivan and Frances Fitzgerald are now making an attempt to intimidate and bully the members into calling off their proposed action. This dispute is about more than money, it’s about years of mismanagement bringing the Force to its knees. Change has to happen, starting with a Garda Commissioner who will lead from the front with a plausible vision for the future of policing in this country and one that will not dissolve into becoming yet another box-ticking exercise. If those in power want to start pointing the finger of blame at anyone, then maybe they should start looking a bit closer to home.

The ghosts of the dead return

With it being this time of the year, I did a little bit of research to find out what this Halloween lark is all about. What I found out would make you wonder about the kind of people our ancestors were and the type of imaginations they had. They must have been a little demented when you look at some of the festivals and rituals that they came up with.

It seems that Halloween dates back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, marked the end of summer and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, as a time of year that was often associated with death. They believed that was the time when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred so on the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when they believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Why they wanted to come back is unclear to me but presumably it had something to do with having a laugh at our expense.

The Irish are to blame

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low so there was always a fear of going hungry. Many people were also afraid of the dark so the short days of winter were full of stress. Halloween was when people thought that they would meet ghosts if they left their homes after dark so that added another worry. To avoid being recognized by the ghosts, people would wear masks when they went out so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. People placed bowls of food outside their homes to keep ghosts away from their houses.

When America was flooded with millions of Irish who were trying to escape from the potato famine, the tradition of Halloween took hold. Americans began to dress up in costumes and would go from house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became what we know today as the “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they would see the name or the face of their future husband by doing tricks with wool, apple skins or mirrors.

How to pick a partner

All Souls’ Day is on 2nd November, and this is an opportunity for Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholic churches to remember the faithful departed and they get a chance to say a few prayers for the souls of the people who are in Purgatory. This is the place in which those who have died have to make amends for their minor sins before they get to go into Heaven. It’s a little bit like a waiting room if you like and the idea is that when a soul leaves the body, it is not fully free from sin so you have to wait for a bit in Purgatory before you get to meet God.

There was also a belief that during Halloween, if a young woman ate a sugary substance made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before she went to bed that night she would dream about her future husband. Young girls tried different ways of trying to identify their future husband and one of those involved throwing apple-peels over their shoulders. It was said that when the peels would fall on the floor, they would form the shape of their future husbands’ initials. They also tried to learn about their future partners by standing in front of mirrors in dark rooms while holding candles and looking over their shoulders to see if they could find their future husbands’ faces.

I suspect that a few of these practices might still be in use today because some of the pairings I have encountered over the years could only be explained by the use of strange substances, dark rooms and a bit of witchcraft.

Two stories caught my eye over the weekend that should be sending us, as a society, on to the rooftops to scream about injustice and the waste of public funds.

He was out on bail

The first one was about a man who came home to find intruders in his house. John O’Donoghue, 62 years of age, went to do some shopping with his sister and when he got home he realised that someone had broken into the house. He collapsed on the ground while his sister called out for help and he died of a suspected heart attack.

David Casey from Dublin and Michael Casey from Clonlong Halting Site in Limerick pleaded guilty to committing the burglary in 2015 and had also carried out other burglaries in the area. When his sister called for help the Caseys climbed out the window and ran through the fields with the stolen property while their victim lay dying on the ground.

David Casey was out on bail at the time of this crime. The Judge in this case will pass sentence in December.

97 year old woman was dragged from her bed

The second case concerns one Sean Gaffney, a 25 year old from Waterford, who smashed a double glazed window at the rear of the house of a 97 year old woman and broke in. He was with another man but he can’t remember who he was. They dragged the elderly woman out of bed and threw her on the living room floor which was littered with broken glass. They searched the house and made off with expensive jewellery. The terrified woman locked herself in the bathroom until the men left the house and then she raised the alarm.

DNA evidence and finger prints led the Gardaí to Gaffney who accepted that he was in the house but said he never touched the old lady. Gaffney has received a 230 hour community service sentence in lieu of a two year prison term and he got a twelve month suspended sentence for the criminal damage charge. The judge took into account a favourable probation report and the fact that Gaffney wasn’t directly involved in the assault and that he cooperated with the gardai.

Criminal Justice System is expensive

The Government is constantly harping on about cut backs and tightening the purse strings and about how there is no money in the kitty to be giving pay rises to the gardai, teachers and nurses. Well maybe they should look at how our Criminal Justice System is administered and make a few cuts there for a start.

It takes a lot of effort by the gardai to investigate crimes like these. Serious resources are used to gather forensic evidence, take statements, nominate and interview suspects, arrest and charge people and then to bring them to court. That’s not cheap. Then we have the cost of prosecuting at a trial and the cost of the defence for the defendant which, more often than not is paid for by us through the use of the free legal aid system. None of that is cheap. Then we have the judges who are charged with dispensing justice and they don’t come cheap either. So all in all it is an expensive process which takes place across the country every day of the week.

Time for change

What is the point in expending this amount of money, time and effort if it’s all going to be for nothing at the end? How longer can the gardai continue to put so much effort into chasing the same guys year after year only to see them back on the streets doing the same thing time and again? How much longer do we have to pay judges these silly salaries for coming up with decisions like this? The general public and the victims deserve better.

Once upon a time…

In the old days in An Garda Siochana we had some primitive equipment and technology. We had phones that were attached to antiquated switch boards and radio sets that had a little dial on the front and on a good day you could have the use of three channels. You could pass a message from one to the other which was basically all you needed. Members went out on beat duty and before they left the station they would be briefed by a sergeant on what they should do and what they should be on the look- out for. They based their briefings on local intelligence and common sense. They were simple times but things worked pretty well and there was a connection with the management and a feeling that we were all working together to catch the bad guys.

Over the years many attempts have been made at improving and modernising the Force and not all of them have worked. PULSE was one such attempt and its introduction was supposed to mark the end of paperwork in An Garda Siochana. The reality is that there is probably more correspondence flying around the organisation now than ever before and it’s all backed up with the same hard copies that PULSE was designed to get rid of. The new roster system has been another disaster.

Political interference must go

Over the years we have seen a growing disconnect between the senior management in An Garda Siochana and the regular police officers who go about their duty on a daily basis. There is a feeling among rank and file gardai that decisions are being made that have more to do with the political aspirations of the Minister for Justice than actual policing.

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has said that if gardaí were to strike, they would “change their relationship with the public forever”. He said that “Whatever they may get for a day on strike, I think they will fundamentally change their relationship with the public who will see it as a carte blanche to break the law and I really hope they don’t cross that Rubicon because it’s not in their interest to do so”.

Bit of a neck

This is fairly rich coming from a guy that has been part of a system that has brought An Garda Siochana to where it is today, perilously close to rock bottom. A lack of foresight and a refusal to invest in manpower, equipment and other resources over the years is the simple reason for that. A colleague of Leo, Dublin Fingal deputy Alan Farrell hit out at Ireland’s “Victorian network” of more than 560 garda stations saying: “We don’t need anything near that”. He said that in his opinion Ireland’s “Victorian network” has “absolutely no space in our policing plans in terms of the maintenance and upkeep of x number of hundred stations across this State when we don’t need anything near that”.

Unknown to Alan, policing in Ireland is uniquely community based and is the envy of other police forces in many jurisdictions around the world. I know this to be a fact because I have addressed many of them in my time. These small stations provide a hugely important part of rural community life and play a vital role in reducing crime and the fear of crime in those areas. Typically these stations are only open for short periods and don’t tie up resources.

Time for change

The men and women at the front line of policing have decided that enough is enough and they have taken the difficult decision to take strike action. I’m sure this decision was not taken lightly and it will have caused much soul searching among those members but there comes a time when people have to be true to themselves and take a stand.

This situation has been developing over years and has been flagged not only by the gardai themselves but also by the Garda Inspectorate. Deputy Chief Inspector Mark Toland said that it’s impossible for senior managers in the guards to know exactly how busy they are if they’re not recording everything and it’s really difficult then to decide how many guards you actually need if you don’t know how busy you are.

He also said that An Garda Síochána is 30 years behind other police services in terms of investment in technology and that civilianisation of the force was “woefully slow”.

This sounds familiar

Crucially they found that people are not always on duty at the right times, in the right places and doing the right things and it is their belief that front-line services are not prioritised and protected. The Inspectorate also had another important observation to make. Chief Inspector Robert Olson said the current crime-logging system used by gardaí – Pulse – should be scrapped and he also said that the universal roster in place in Garda stations needs to be updated as it’s “not fit for purpose for criminal investigation, simple as that”.

They have also said that “many leaders are reluctant to make decisions and to speak up.” I have been criticised in the past for making that very point.

The Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice issue a lot of meaningless statements while passing the baton of responsibility from one to the other. They arrogantly refuse to listen to their critics and stubbornly carry on as before. How often do they have to be told?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some people who lay their lives out in front of them and they follow a certain path and everything seems to work out for them. They know what they want so they go and get it. These are the kind of people who, if they were asked in an interview where they would see themselves in five years’ time, would be able to give a proper answer. They are a dream for the career guidance teachers. Then there are others who fly by the seat of their pants and deal with things as they arise. They couldn’t tell you what they will be doing in five months’ time, never mind five years and that’s the group that I belong to.

My late father was a small time building contractor and as far back as I can remember I always wanted to work with him when I left school. I spent most of my school holidays messing around on building sites and I loved it. This is what I was going to do and I didn’t have much of an interest in doing anything else. So I served an apprenticeship and worked away happily for a few years until one day I went to the hardware store in the van to get some bags of cement. As I pulled up outside the store there was a thunder shower so I had to stay put until the rain stopped.

Decision to become a policeman

While I was sitting there the local garda car passed by and it was travelling at about fifteen miles an hour. As it passed I nodded to the two gardai and they saluted me back. They were in their shirt sleeves and they were nice and clean while I was in a dirty pair of overalls which would soon get even dirtier. I watched the car as it went to the end of the town and then it came back and passed me again. It was still driving slowly and I couldn’t help but notice that the guys seemed totally relaxed. There didn’t seem to be any prospect of them getting wet or dirty. Soon after that, the rain stopped and I collected my bags of cement and delivered them to the site. Then I went home, had a shower and went down to the local garda station and I told the sergeant that I wanted to join up. I didn’t wait to discuss it with anybody or take time to consider the decision, I just went for it. That was in 1978 and a year later I became a member of An Garda Siochana and went on to serve in that organisation for thirty five and a half years.

The lure of Chernobyl

In the early nineties I was driving a patrol car on the north side of the city when I was asked to escort a bus to the City Hall. It was full of children who were travelling from Shannon Airport and they were on their way to meet the Lord Mayor when they got stuck in traffic in Blackpool. They had come from Belarus and they were kids who had been affected by the fallout as a result of the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. I went into the City Hall with them and stayed for a while and I was fascinated with the whole story. I went back to work and when I finished my shift at 2pm I got into my car to go home. As I drove down Silversprings Lane I thought about those kids and I was trying to decide whether to go back to town again or to just go home. At the last miniute I turned right and headed for City Hall where I met a guy called Simon Walsh. That started a relationship with children affected by the Chernobyl accident that was to last for the next twenty five years.

On the spot decisions

These two decisions that I made on the spur of the moment had huge consequences for me and the road that I travelled. The amount of friends I have made and the experiences that I have had as a result of these decisions are impossible to quantify and I wouldn’t change any of it. The experience of being involved in bringing humanitarian aid convoys to the Chernobyl affected areas of Belarus and Western Russia was mind blowing and I have made so many close friends as a result of those trips.

I get a little amused when I hear youngsters fretting about their exam results and the number of points they need and how the world is going to fall down around their ears if they don’t reach their target. I know there is a lot of pressure on many of them to succeed either placed on them by themselves or others but things have a way of working themselves out.

Tough duty

I remember being on duty at a festival many years ago and it was on a very hot day in the middle of the summer. One of the lads was put on duty at the edge of the town to keep the traffic moving. The heat of the day and the effect of too many gins the night before took their toll and he took a break sitting on a wall with his back resting against a pole. He duly fell asleep while the traffic ground to a halt around him. He was approached by an irate superintendent who was spitting with temper and challenged him for an explanation. “Well”, he said, “sometimes I think you’re better off to just let things work themselves out”. It wasn’t really the explanation that the superintendent was expecting.

Things have worked out for me so far but don’t even think of asking me where I see myself in five years’ time.

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar said that if gardaí were to strike, they would “change their relationship with the public forever”. He said that “Whatever they may get for a day on strike, I think they will fundamentally change their relationship with the public who will see it as a carte blanche to break the law and I really hope they don’t cross that Rubicon because it’s not in their interest to do so”.

This is fairly rich coming from a guy that has been part of a system that has brought An Garda Siochana to where it is today, perilously close to rock bottom. A lack of foresight and a refusal to invest in manpower, equipment and other resources over the years is the simple reason for that. Now the gardai have decided that enough is enough and it is truly remarkable that Leo and his colleagues didn’t see it coming.

Another colleague of Leo, Dublin Fingal deputy Alan Farrell hit out at Ireland’s “Victorian network” of more than 560 garda stations saying: “We don’t need anything near that”. He said that in his opinion Ireland’s “Victorian network” has “absolutely no space in our policing plans in terms of the maintenance and upkeep of x number of hundred stations across this State when we don’t need anything near that”. He didn’t see the sense in having guards tied up minding small stations which is why they closed 139 of them.

If he had taken the time to do some simple investigating he could easily have discovered that policing in Ireland is uniquely community based and is the envy of other police forces in many jurisdictions around the world. I know this to be a fact because I have addressed many of them in my time. They could also have easily discovered that these small stations provide a hugely important part of rural community life and play a vital role in reducing the fear of crime in those areas. Typically these stations are only open for short periods, usually for a couple of hours in the morning, and the members there spend the rest of their time working among those same communities.

Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Justice, decided that closing garda stations was a great strategy and she tried to convince everyone that the community would be better served by this stroke of genius. She was supported in this ruse by Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan who has recently spent several days at a US policing conference where she was a key-note speaker. She was accompanied by her husband that she recently promoted to the rank of Chief Superintendent.

What nuggets of advice Noirin had for the Americans is unclear to me but if they take any notice of her, Frances Fitzgerald, Leo or Alan then I would suggest that they prepare to man the lifeboats.

And they wonder why the gardai are threatening to go on strike. You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

Air travel has changed a lot since the days of Alcock and Brown. Gone are the open cockpits, goggles, Biggles type hats and scarves. If those guys could come back for a visit and see how aviation has changed, I imagine that the shock would probably send them straight back to whatever heavenly runway they came from. It’s impressive the way some of these monsters can even get off the ground.

It’s the same thing with the cruise liners. Some of these ships, like the Caribbean Princess, have the bones of three and a half thousand people on board. That Princess has nineteen decks, a crew of twelve hundred, five swimming pools, a couple of movie theatres, several night clubs and numerous restaurants and bars. It’s nearly a thousand feet long for God’s sake so how can it possibly stay afloat? When it berths at the quayside in Cobh it dominates the landscape. Yet it just sits there in all its glory, on a small body of water, and waits, without sinking. It’s a remarkable sight.

Flying made easy

Anyway, whatever about ships, Alcock and Brown would also be surprised at the amount of traffic in the sky these days. If you spend a few hours in Sydney or Heathrow Airport and just watch the flights coming and going you’d wonder how it is possible to have so many planes in the sky at one time without smashing into each other. Even sitting in a plane at Heathrow waiting in the queue to depart is an eye opener. They really operate on a very tight schedule. Yet, in spite of all that, it remains one of the safest forms of transport. So we’re told.

Commercial flying has gone through a few changes over the years. What began as a complicated business soon became a lot more straightforward and user friendly. You purchased a ticket, handed in your luggage, got a boarding pass, went through minimal security and boarded the plane. Suddenly we were all flying to holiday destinations for a few weeks in the sun. Then when we thought that it couldn’t get any easier we were introduced to online booking and online check- in. Getting a flight became as simple as catching a taxi or a train.

It was too good to last so it didn’t. Along came 9/11 and that changed everything. That and other acts of terror since then have made life much more difficult for the air traveller. Security checks are intensive and time consuming. I’m all in favour of airport security and I’m happy to see it. I am much more comfortable sitting next to a guy when I can be reasonably confident he doesn’t have a Kalashnikov or an AK47 in his hold-all or a hundred weight of Semtex tucked into his underpants.

It’s starting to get complicated

But the security confuses me. If it is absolutely necessary to take off your shoes, belt and watch for a proper security check then let’s do it. Let’s all sing from the one hymn sheet. Then every time we approach the security table we can all place these items in the tray. We’ll all be prepared so it will probably save us some time in the long run. But this isn’t the case. Sometimes you will be asked to remove one of the items while on other occasions you will be asked to remove everything and in some cases you won’t be required to remove anything.

If these checks are so revealing and so important why aren’t we all subjected to them on every occasion? If I have to take my shoes off in Dublin then why don’t I have to take them off in Heathrow or vice versa? If it’s just certain passengers that are chosen at random for these checks then is that really good enough? Despite all we know about security and all the intelligence we have on terrorists and other criminals there are still a few nutters that slip the net. There is no system in place that can be completely fool proof as long as you have characters that are prepared to sacrifice their lives for their allocation of virgins in another dimension.

Are we safe?

Security measures will be effective against the guy who doesn’t want to get caught and will act as a good deterrent. But they are less effective against someone who is not worried about being caught or someone who is happy to die for his particular cause.

We have seen in the past that there are the occasional slip ups in airport security. Recently there was a guy who had a selfie taken with some disturbed passenger that was hijacking a plane to go to Larnaka in Cyprus to visit a female like a love sick puppy. As is happened it all turned out ok but it could just as easily have gone pear shaped if he had been a genuine terrorist.

There isn’t much we can do about it if we find ourselves in that situation. Having a photo taken with Mr. Terrorist wouldn’t be high on my list of priorities. Rooting out the life jacket from under my seat at 30,000 feet wouldn’t necessarily fill me with confidence either. Beating him to a pulp appeals to me but then if he was armed with something that would make a loud bang and split the plane in two, then that course of action might be counterproductive.

Flying might be as safe as they say it is but maybe I should just start using one of those cruise liners instead. At least if I ran into a terrorist on one of those I wouldn’t have far to fall and the life jacket would probably be a lot more useful in the water than it would be up in the clouds.

 

 

What is Cyprus like? In a nutshell it’s small, hot, dry, friendly, populated by people who shout a lot and who have no idea how to drive. In a word, it’s heaven.

The country is divided since 1974. In the North you have the Turkish Cypriots, in the South you have the Greek Cypriots and the UN is in the middle. While a certain animosity exists between both sides it doesn’t affect the traveler apart from the fact that moving from one side to the other requires a little paperwork. It’s worth making the effort to experience the whole island because there is a lot to see and you will be made to feel very welcome whatever side you visit.

Great food

If you like good food but you are concerned about your figure then you seriously need to consider going somewhere else. Or alternatively, lose a couple of stone before you go and you just might be lucky enough to fit in the front door when you get back home. Leave the main tourist spots and you will find many local farmers who also operate little restaurants during the summer and they are gems.

A sixteen course mezze is not just a meal it is an occasion. Cypriots like to socialize and a meal for them is a time to chat and relax so when you go out for dinner be prepared for a long evening sitting under the stars, and don’t be surprised if the owner joins you at the table. Everything in Cyprus is done at their pace and it’s similar to that of a snail. So chill out and enjoy the food sensation that won’t leave you having to sleep rough.

Driving can be scary

Cyprus is a small place by car but driving is not for the faint hearted. Some experience of driving armoured vehicles for the military or off road driving in Afghanistan would be an advantage. Cypriots have their own style. It mainly involves one hand hanging out the window, no use of indicators and a complete lack of interest in stop signs or traffic lights. They don’t park their cars they just abandon them. A space may be too small to take the entire car but as long as the front wheel fits in then that’s good enough. The fact that the rest of the car is blocking the entire street is irrelevant.

If you like peace and quiet then a hearing impairment may be an advantage. Cypriots are loud and they shout a lot at each other. They say that it comes from the fact that families regularly eat together outdoors where noise isn’t an issue. They might sound aggressive but they are far from it.

This is a country that has a glorious climate and where rain is a stranger. It might take a while to get there but when you do, you won’t want to leave. July and August can be hot with temperatures hitting forty degrees plus so air conditioning is a must unless you’re a fan of sleep deprivation.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m all in favour of having standards in place to reduce the risk of people causing harm to themselves while carrying out dangerous tasks. We hear all too regularly about serious accidents that could have been prevented if a little care had been exercised. We often hear during the summer time of children being involved in farm accidents and we hear of workplace accidents that could have been prevented for the want of some simple precautions. So health and safety standards were introduced to reduce the risks of injury to workers and that’s fair enough.

But there are some people who take a different view. When I was growing up I couldn’t understand why so many fishermen went out to work every day without wearing a life jacket. The answer I was given was that most of them couldn’t swim and if something was to happen to them that would cause them to end up in the water then they didn’t want to waste time struggling to survive in a sea that was eventually going to claim their lives anyway. They wanted it to end quickly so they didn’t go to sea prepared for a fight.

Recently I heard a young lad being interviewed on the radio after surviving a serious crash. By all accounts he was lucky to survive with the injuries that he sustained but he was wearing a seat belt and that saved his life. But during the interview he explained that he never normally wore one but he did that night and he doesn’t know why he did. He said that he likes to drive fast but probably wouldn’t wear the seat belt again.

There is room to improve

 

At the other end of the spectrum you have the guys who go completely over the top. I was watching a programme on RTE recently called Room to Improve. For any of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a show about an architect who takes on projects of renovating homes for different couples and turns them from bog standard houses to state of the art homes. It’s a pleasant enough show but it is a little predictable.

The show follows a formula. It starts off with an agreed plan, work gets underway, then there’s the mix up in the interpretation of the drawings between the architect and the builder, then we have the dispute about the over run in costs before the final reveal where the champagne is uncorked and everyone pats each other on the back for a job well done. But, in spite of all that, it’s a pleasant enough show and the results are generally impressive.

At various points in the show the architect meets with the owners of the property on site to see how the work is progressing. A building site can be a dangerous environment so you need to take precautions when you are going anywhere near one and that’s fine. But on the show I was watching, the three of them met on the side of the road at the entrance to the property. They didn’t actually go beyond the front gate but each of them was wearing a hard hat and a high-viz vest and to be honest it looked a bit ridiculous.

If we want to make a statement about health and safety then we need to get a small bit realistic. If we want people to start taking it seriously then we need to start using some common sense. Having three adults standing at the entrance to a building site, kitted out like Bob the Builder is not going to impress anyone. Let’s be honest, a stray bird poop or perhaps a nettle sting was the only potential threat that they were likely to face. If they were in danger standing at the gate, then the builders were in serious trouble.

Time for some common sense

You’re average Joe soap who wants to paint the gable end of his house is not going to put on a hard hat, goggles, fireproof overalls, industrial gloves and steel toe capped boots. And there is a very simple reason why he won’t do that. Because if he does he won’t be able to see properly so he’ll probably end up painting the wrong house. He won’t be able to feel anything so he’ll constantly drop the paint brush and he’ll lose his footing on the ladder and cause himself an injury falling off it. The hard hat will be redundant because there is nothing to fall on top of him unless a passing Boeing 747 gets into bother and in that case the plastic hat won’t help much. If we expect people to take health and safety seriously then we need to be practical about it and use some common sense when introducing guide lines.

You can’t make every action completely safe and there will always be a certain element of danger with some tasks. You could, for instance, burn your hand while boiling an egg. But you could definitely reduce the risk by taking some precautions before cooking over a naked flame. On the other hand, you could go down the road of having to prepare a safety statement, placing safety notices on every door and wearing fire- proof overalls, hard hat, goggles and gloves while having a unit of the local fire service and the Red Cross on standby in the driveway. That might make you safer but you would probably just give up on the egg.

It might happen that you won’t be allowed to put out the wheelie bin unless you have a safe handling degree from a recognised university. Or, you may not be allowed to wipe your bottom or flush the toilet without having completed a course in waste management. This is where we are headed so you better get ready for it.