Dublin City Council has been fined €5,000 arising out of the collapse of a bus shelter which trapped a woman who suffered two broken arms and injuries to her kidneys, bowels, liver, pelvis and abdomen.
The council had pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in June to breaching provisions of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989 arising out of an excavation project at Lower Mount Street.
Margaret Fee told that hearing she thought a building had fallen on top of her when she was knocked over and trapped by the collapsed bus shelter on June 9th, 2003.
Eugene O'Reilly, senior engineer, pleaded guilty on behalf of the council that it failed to take measures to ensure the area was safe by failing to put "an adequate exclusion zone" around the excavation works
Judge Desmond Hogan imposed the €5,000 fine, which he said was to be paid within two months. The city council's guilty plea came on day two of a trial that had been scheduled to continue for at least a week.
Health and Safety Authority inspector Tom Murphy told Paul Greene, prosecuting, that the council had three District Court convictions for safety breaches, two of which resulted in fatalities.
He said he accepted that Adshel had constructed the shelter in accordance with planning permission from Dublin Corporation in 1985, which specified that it should be anchored by its own foundation and therefore should not be reliant on the footpath for its stability.
Paul Coffey SC (with Emily Farrell), for the council, told Judge Hogan that this was an unprecedented event which arose out of "a risk that could not easily be foreseeable" and that it didn't happen because of deliberate or conscious action taken by the council.
Mr Coffey said there was an assumption that the shelter was adequately supported according to Adshel's own guidelines and there was no suggestion that its collapse was caused by any wrongdoing by the council.
Ms Fee, who was working with the Revenue Commissioners at the time, said she was trapped under the bus shelter until passersby lifted it and waited with her until an ambulance and a fire brigade arrived.
She broke both her arms and had significant damage to her kidneys, bowels and liver, with injuries also to her pelvis and abdomen.
Ms Fee said she spent four weeks in intensive care and was not released from hospital until September that year. Because of complications with her injuries, she spent two weeks in intensive care and six months as an in-patient in 2004 and still attended at St Vincent's hospital for surgical, orthopaedic and psychological care.
She hadn't been able to return to work and could no longer play pitch and putt or take long walks. She said she still has numbness in her sides and suffers from depression.
Mr Murphy told Mr Greene that council workers had been removing and replacing flagstones in the vicinity of the bus shelter that day and had coned off an area around the excavation at 4pm before leaving the site for the day.
He said the workers had also used Kango hammers and pickaxes to remove the concrete from under the flagstones to a depth of six inches and had left a mound of debris in the area. The coning at either end meant that members of the public had to walk into the bus lane to pass by.