Incident Reporting & Investigation

Last updated: Wed, October 19th, 2022

Reporting to the State Claims Agency

Under the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act, 2000, Community and Comprehensive Schools are obliged to report all incidents promptly to the State Claims Agency and to facilitate any subsequent investigation. This includes any unplanned or uncontrolled occurrence or sequence of occurrences that caused or had the potential to cause injury, ill-health, disease, and/or damage/loss to property/service. This includes incidents involving persons, third party property or the organisation as a whole. This includes all accidents involving staff, students, visitors and others.

All incidents reported to the SCA are recorded on the National data base known as the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Nominated NIMS users within your school can report incidents directly onto NIMS. All other members of staff can report incidents by completing a National Incident Report Form (NIRF) and submitting this to an appointed member of staff (admin staff, Principal, Health & Safety Advisor) for review and inputting. The NIRF reflects the information required to be inputted to NIMS.

• National Incident Report Form (English)

• National Incident Report Form (As Gaeilge)

• National Incident Investigation Form (English)

• National Incident Investigation Form (As Gaeilge)

• Getting access to the National Incident Management System

• NIMS eLearning Course

• Guidance on how to enter incidents on NIMS

• Data Quality on NIMS

Reporting to the Health and Safety Authority

Schools also have a statutory duty to report accidents and dangerous occurrences to the Health and Safety Authority (HSA):

Accidents should be reported to the HSA using the online reporting system on their website at www.hsa.ie.

The school must keep records of all accidents which occur for a period of ten years from the date of the incident and in the case of students, two years after they turn eighteen years old. The records can be kept in the same format as the report was made – that is, a copy of the report submitted to the HSA will suffice to meet the obligation.