Building workers brought traffic to a halt in Dublin City centre this morning during a protest over safety standards on building sites.
The protest came only days following the death of 31-year-old Lucan man Mr Thomas O'Neill at a G&T Crampton building site in Ringsend. Mr O'Neill was married with two children. His was the third building-related death last week.
A man died while working on a trench in Ballymun on Monday while another man in his sixties died while working on a trench in Co Louth.
The Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Frank Fahey said new legislation to be introduced next year would establish new maximum penalties for those found responsible for workplace accidents would range from €3,000 to €300,000, in place of the current District Court maximum of €1,900.
An in-depth study by the Health and Safety Authority released to the Irish Timeslast week concluded that site management failures rather than the actions of individual workers are largely to blame for construction industry failures.
It found that 45 per cent of fatal accidents between 1998 and 2001 had occurred at sites which had not appointed project supervisors for the design and construction stages.