Lone Working in Home Care in Ireland: HSA and HIQA Guide

Lone working in home care and home support in Ireland is a staff safety issue before it is anything else. A home support worker or community nurse spends much of the day in private houses, with no colleague in the room and often no supervisor on site. Under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, the employer must identify the hazards that creates, keep a written risk assessment and act on any improvements it identifies. This guide is for Irish home care providers, managers and HR teams, including Dublin-based providers. It is about the people delivering care. For the wider employer duties that apply to any lone worker, see our general guide to lone working in Ireland.

Two points before the detail. First, the law is national, so the same Act applies whether your staff work in Dublin or in a rural area. Second, staff safety and the quality and safety of the care itself are separate matters. The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) publishes the lone working guidance for the health and social care sector discussed below. The new home support legislation is about the second area, the regulation of providers.

What the HSA guidance says about lone workers in health and social care

The HSA publishes Guidance on Managing the Risk of Lone Working in the Health and Social Care Sector. It says it is not intended as a legal interpretation of the legislation, so treat it as guidance, not as the law itself, and check you are using the current version. It defines a lone worker as someone who works by themselves without close or direct supervision. Its examples of staff working alone include nurses and home support workers in the community, and it also covers staff working outside normal hours and staff in rural, remote or isolated areas.

The guidance refers to section 19 of the 2005 Act as the basis for the employer's risk assessment, including deciding whether an employee may work alone and whether they are at significantly higher risk when doing so. It also states that employers cannot transfer their responsibilities for lone workers to anyone else. That matters for providers who use agency or sessional staff: the guidance lists agency and temporary staff among the workers an employer should consider when asking who may be more vulnerable.

The legal starting point: risk assessment and safety statement

According to the text of section 19 on irishstatutebook.ie, every employer must identify the hazards in the place of work under their control, assess the risks and keep a written risk assessment. The assessment must be reviewed after a significant change or if there is reason to believe it is no longer valid, and any improvement it identifies must be implemented. Section 20 requires a written safety statement based on that assessment. It must set out the hazards found, the protective and preventive measures, and the emergency plans, and it must be brought to employees' attention at least annually, after any amendment and to new recruits when they start. Our guide to the safety statement and risk assessment under the 2005 Act goes through these duties in more detail.

The HSA guidance does not set a fixed number of check-ins, a maximum visit length or a required alarm device. Our reading is that the duty is to assess and control the risk, and the controls are for the provider to justify.

Assessing the risks of home visits

The HSA guidance says a risk assessment should identify the significant hazards and the staff group affected, record existing controls and whether they are sufficient, identify further controls, and note tasks that are too difficult or dangerous to do alone. It should be documented, signed and dated, and reviewed periodically, after any incident and after significant change. Employees should be consulted. If the assessment shows the work cannot be done safely alone, the guidance says alternative arrangements must be made.

Hazards the guidance lists include:

• Violence and aggression, including verbal abuse and challenging behaviour from service users.
• Psychological risks such as isolation and work-related stress.
• Travel, including driving fatigue on late shifts over long distances, and keeping vehicles roadworthy.
• People moving and handling. The guidance says that before working alone in a service user's home, an assessment must cover challenging behaviour and people moving and handling.
• Animals, which the guidance says should be restrained before the worker arrives.

The guidance also describes dynamic risk assessment: the worker continually observing the environment for changing risks and, if the risk rises, deciding whether to continue or withdraw. Our suggestion: make sure your procedures state clearly that a worker who withdraws on safety grounds will be supported, otherwise the option exists only on paper.

Controls the guidance lists for working away from base

• Matching skills to need. Match the worker's skills to the service user's support needs, and obtain the service user's history before the visit where available.
• Alternatives for higher-risk visits. Where risk is unacceptable, the guidance suggests the service user could attend the workplace, or visits could be made in pairs.
• Information held at base. The base should hold the service users' names, visit addresses and scheduled arrival and departure times.
• Emergency equipment. Examples include mobile phones with emergency code words and speed dials, and duress alarms.
• Check-in calls at agreed intervals. The guidance does not specify the intervals.
• A plan for a missed check-in. The options it gives include trying to contact the worker, informing a senior manager or contacting the Gardaí.
• A safe procedure for immediate withdrawal from a threatening situation.

The guidance adds that arrangements for routine contact and for emergencies must be established and tested. Our suggestion: run a short test of the missed check-in procedure with real phones and real out-of-hours contacts, then record the result with the risk assessment.

Training, supervision and support after incidents

The guidance says workers should not work alone until adequately trained, including in personal safety and any lone worker devices. Topics it lists include first aid and emergency procedures, infection control, cultural awareness, manual handling and people moving, and prevention and de-escalation of violence and aggression. It says the level of supervision depends on the risk and the worker's experience, and that new workers, trainees and those new to a task should initially be accompanied. Where a worker's first language is not English, it says training will need to be delivered in a form, manner and language they understand, which is relevant to many Dublin care teams.

After an incident, the guidance says employers should provide support such as debriefs, occupational health and counselling, and should have a system for reporting and investigating incidents and near misses and analysing trends. It also states that where a workplace accident leaves an employee unable to perform normal work for more than three consecutive days, it must be reported to the HSA online or on an IR1 form. The guidance does not set out the full reporting rules, so check the HSA reporting requirements directly.

How the Home Support Providers Act 2026 fits in

The Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Act 2026 (No. 17 of 2026) amends the Health Act 2007. Its long title describes a scheme of registration and inspection of persons who provide certain support services to older persons and persons with disabilities in their private dwellings. According to the Oireachtas copy of the Act, registration applies to providers, not to individual employees, and it lasts three years. The Act says a person who provides a home support service to fewer than four persons is not within the definition, and it lists other exemptions. Our separate post on the Home Support Providers Act 2026 and HIQA registration covers the scheme itself.

For this guide, the key point is that this Act is not a health and safety statute for staff. The Oireachtas Library and Research Service digest of the Bill (January 2026) describes registration of providers, rather than individual home support workers, and we did not find a health and safety regime for workers in it. Our reading of the Act is that it contains no explicit staff health and safety provisions, though it allows regulations to cover matters such as staff numbers, qualifications and training, and risk management. Check whether any such regulations have been made.

The Act comes into operation on a day or days the Minister appoints by order, so check the current position before you plan around it. Our suggestion: do not wait for registration to be switched on before reviewing lone working. The duties under the 2005 Act already apply to any employer with staff working alone in clients' homes.

A practical review checklist for providers

• Do you have a written lone working assessment specific to home visits, signed, dated and linked to your safety statement?
• Does each client have a pre-visit risk review, including behaviour, handling needs, animals and access?
• Does base hold names, addresses and expected arrival and departure times for every visit?
• Have you tested your check-in and missed check-in procedure out of hours?
• Are new staff accompanied at first, and trained before working alone?
• Do staff know they can withdraw, and what happens next?
• Is there a post-incident process covering debrief, reporting and review of the assessment?

Our suggestions, drawn from the HSA guidance and not a legal checklist.

Learnsignal's offices are off Baggot Street in Dublin, and we offer in-person training from there. For current details, see our CPD pages.

Frequently asked questions

Is lone working legal in home care in Ireland?

The HSA guidance treats lone working as a recognised feature of health and social care, and lists nurses and home support workers in the community as examples. Section 19 of the 2005 Act requires the employer to carry out a written risk assessment, and the HSA guidance says that assessment determines whether an employee may work alone; if the work cannot be done safely alone, the guidance says alternative arrangements must be made.

Does the Home Support Providers Act 2026 set lone working rules?

Not directly. We found no explicit staff health and safety provisions in the Act, and none in the Oireachtas digest of the Bill. The 2005 Act and the HSA guidance remain the source of your duties to staff.

How often should home care workers check in?

The HSA guidance calls for check-in calls at agreed intervals but does not specify them. The provider should set the interval from its risk assessment, test it, and review it after incidents.

Who regulates home support: the HSA or HIQA?

They cover different things. The HSA guidance covers the safety of staff working alone. The new registration scheme, as described in the Act and the Oireachtas digest, involves the Chief Inspector of Social Services and HIQA standards for providers; check the current position on when registration begins.

Do small providers have to register under the new Act?

The Act text says a person providing a home support service to fewer than four persons is not within the definition, and it lists other exemptions. Check the full text and commencement position for your circumstances. Separately, the 2005 Act duties on risk assessment apply to any employer, whatever its size.

Lone working risk is manageable when it is assessed, written down, tested and reviewed. Start with the HSA guidance and keep your records current.