‘Being a contractor, time is money . . . you can become a bit oblivious to the risks’

When Robert Bradshaw slipped off a wall on a Co Cork building site in 2014, it would be seven months before he made it home from hospital. Even today, he says, it is a struggle to accept he will never walk again.

“I was of the mindset that it will never happen to me,” he says of the kind of workplace incident that everyone is warned about in a health and safety culture. He avoided death but the consequences have been profound.

“[My family] have been affected too by my accident. It was physical at the start but it became mental very quickly.”

Today, Mr Bradshaw (52) dedicates his time to giving talks on safety, travelling to building sites as the embodiment of what might happen when all the official warnings fail to get through.

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He says his arrival in a wheelchair is a stark illustration before he even begins to tell his story but he is experienced enough to know that many building site workers – he was one of them – do not pay enough attention.

“Being a contractor, time is money and you are anxious to get back out on site and you can become a bit oblivious to the risks,” he says. “You don’t get paid until the job is finished.”

Fractured vertebrae

Mr Bradshaw did not lack experience either. For 30 years he had worked on sites as a welding and fabricating contractor without an accident. He regularly worked at heights above the 2.5 metres that ultimately led to his paralysis.

He remembers falling and having no time to turn before hitting the ground. He landed straight on his back, fracturing two vertebrae. Emergency surgery was carried out to relieve the pressure and reduce swelling but it was quickly apparent he had no feeling below the waist.

He did not give up. Doctors dispatched him to rehabilitation but as the months passed it became clear he would not leave his wheelchair.

“Up to today that’s my story,” he says. “I go around and do health and safety speeches on sites and the bigger companies bring me in to tell my story in the hope that people might listen to me. I would say some do, some don’t.”

The HSA figures do not surprise him, he says. When people are working at lower, still dangerous heights, they are more likely to be careless.

“My message when I speak is: when you go out in the morning, for your wife and your kids the onus is on you to come home the same way, safe and sound.”