Site forced to close after safety complaint

The High Court yesterday shut down a building site following a complaint about dangerous work practices that posed a serious threat to workers.

The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) secured the order from the court yesterday. During an inspection earlier this week, the agency was forced to call the fire brigade to bring one worker safely down from the roof of a unit at the site in Duleek Business Park, Co Meath.

Ms Justice Laffoy granted a temporary order against the operators, Site Project Contractors Ltd of Cashel, Co Tipperary, a director of the company, Donal O'Dwyer, and project supervisor Michael O'Dwyer, halting work at the Duleek site.

Once it came into force yesterday, work there stopped and the area was vacated. A group of mainly Romanian employees who were living in mobile homes on the site were forced to leave as a result.

The men had to leave as the HSA warned in court that conditions there were not safe. The men were paying their employers for the onsite accommodation and were also providing security at night.

The court heard that HSA inspector Kay Baxter first visited the site in late March, where she observed a number of dangerous practices, including an employee working on an unsafe platform. Ms Baxter then discovered the company did not have the correct safety documents, including a safety statement.

She asked Donal Dwyer to meet her at the agency's offices in Dublin on March 30th. Mr Dwyer brought site manager Liam Bolger to the meeting.

They provided a safety statement and agreed to voluntarily halt work, close the site and make the necessary improvements. Under this procedure, the site had to be inspected again before work could restart.

However, Ms Baxter heard nothing from the company until April 18th, at which point it wrote to her telling her that work had started again there.

She visited the site again on May 3rd, and this time saw one of the workers leaving the roof of one of the units under construction via a man basket operated by a forklift. Ms Baxter inspected two of the baskets on the site and found them to be defective and dangerous. She banned the company from using them. The inspector also found a number of open trenches which, she told the company, should have been back-filled.

On her next site visit earlier this week, she saw an employee using a wooden pallet placed on forklift forks to work at an elevated level. Ms Baxter observed another man working on the roof of one of the units without any safety harness or safety equipment.

The court heard that she had no other option but to call the local fire brigade to help the man down from the roof. When he was eventually brought down, Ms Baxter verified that he had no harness or other safety equipment.

Justice Laffoy granted the order at lunchtime yesterday but allowed two hours for the workers who were living on site time to prepare to move out.

The issue will be raised in court again on Monday and the defendants, who were not present yesterday, will be allowed a chance to respond.