Incident Reporting & Investigation

Last updated: Tue, Jun 3rd, 2025

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).

Getting access to NIMS

  • New users (school not set-up on NIMS) follow the steps outlined in Getting Access to NIMS.

  • New users (school set-up on NIMS) should complete 40 minutes NIMS eLearning here: https://stateclaims.nimslearning.ie and send the eLearning certificate of completion to stateclaims@ntma.ie. NIMS helpdesk will revert with log on details

  • Existing users: Enter your Client ID(NIMS), User ID and password. You will then receive a text message for 2 Factor sign in.

Contact NIMSHElpdesk@NTMA.ie if you have any issues logging in

Reporting an incident

There are 4 National Incident Report Forms (NIRF) available for use in Schools to record incidents:

  • NIRF 01 Person -  Use this form for harm and/or near miss incidents which involve a person, including two people bumping / crashing  into each other.  

  • NIRF 02 Crash/Collision -  Use this for incidents which involve vehicle only. Do not use for incidents where two people bump / crash into each other. 

  • NIRF 03 Property Damage - Use this for damage to school  or third-party property, excluding crash/collisions

  • NIRF 04 Dangerous Occurrence – Dangerous Occurrence as described by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) or any other dangerous occurrence as prescribed/deemed appropriate by the school

Once the relevant NIRF is completed the NIMS inputter in your school should upload the incident onto NIMS. The NIMS guidance document below provide guidance and support.

Note: Certain incidents will go under a sensitive location on NIMS, where only a nominated person(s) will be given access to this (i.e. school’s principal). Examples include staff bullying or wrongful accusations against staff.

Investigating an incident

The National Incident Investigation Form (NIIF) is available for use in schools to assist incident investigation. If completing an investigation, it is sufficient to log the outcome directly on NIMS investigation screens, the NIIF is a supporting tool for schools to use if they wish. The level of investigation should be proportionate to the severity of the event but at a minimum any incidents rated on NIMS as Moderate, Major or Extreme should be investigated or any incidents where a trend is identified e.g. cluster in same location

Help and Support

General incident management guidance:

NIMS guidance:

The NIMS eLearning course can also be completed as a refresher at any time.

If you have any queries or need help contact stateclaims@ntma.ie or NIMShelpdesk@ntma.ie.