Pharma firm got €15m pay-out after explosion
Judgment will be given on Tuesday against Corden Pharma Ltd, trading as Corden Pharmachem in a case where an explosion caused the death of one employee and serious injuries to another.
Judge Patrick J Moran asked on the second day of the sentencing hearing at Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday how much the company had received in its insurance claim as a result of the accident.
Defence senior counsel Tom Creed took instructions and said it was paid €15m, half of which went towards paying redundancies to 92 staff, €4m to the decommissioning of the processing plant and the remaining €3.5m into the company’s research and development business.
Judge Moran said on that basis, each employee would have received an average redundancy payment in the region of €80,000.
Mr Creed in his closing submission said that in the year before the accident the company had a €25m turnover and a net profit of over €500,000.
Mr Creed said: “People cut corners and save money but that is not what happened here. €444,000 was spent on safety in the year that it happened. There was a serious attitude to safety and risk assessment but it fell short of the standard.
“They missed this risk, so clearly the defendant fell short of standard for compliance. They went about their business in a professional manner but they missed this risk. They did not locate it for the purpose of assessing it.”
Judge Moran reminded Mr Creed of the defendant company’s previous convictions for breaches of health and safety legislation — three convictions arising out of two incidents in 2008, less than two months before the explosion in the present case. The senior counsel said these breaches were dealt with at district court level and this indicated the relative seriousness of them.
Simon Waldron, a doctor of chemical engineering, was called on behalf of the defendant company and said of the cause of the accident: “I think a series of errors were made. The batch process sheet of instructions was not followed to the letter. Perhaps four or five errors were made.”
Mr Waldron described the training culture in Corden as impressive and said it entailed bringing in external experts. He said the staff were trained extensively in relevant safety procedures.
John Lynch, who spent 33 years as a fire officer, consulted with Corden and described its system of responding to an emergency as being in line with the best in industry standards.
Noel Reidy, an emergency management specialist, said the company had a very comprehensive and progressive procedure in place to deal with such eventualities.
The blast happened on Apr 28, 2008, at the company’s Little Island plant.
Liam Nodwell was killed in the explosion and Jimmy O’Sullivan seriously injured.
Inspector Michael Boylan of the Health and Safety Authority described it as one of the worst accidents since the pharmaceutical industry started.
