‘Nothing can bring back our son’

THE parents of a nine-year-old boy who died in a construction site explosion said yesterday that nothing could be done to bring their boy back.

Sean and Geraldine Long were speaking after a construction firm was fined €200,000 in relation to the death of their son, Stephen.

Yesterday Judge Patrick J. Moran convicted and fined O’Flynn Construction Company Ltd at Cork Circuit Criminal Court arising out of an incident on September 9, 2001. A barrel of wood preservative caught fire and exploded leaving nine-year-old Stephen with extensive burns from which he died.

The boy has been playing on the building site when the accident occurred. Yesterday the firm pleaded guilty to health and safety breaches.

The incident happened at Clarke’s Hill, Rochestown, Cork, at the Mount Oval village construction site. A number of boys were playing there and a fire was lit.

After the court hearing yesterday, Stephen’s parents, through their solicitor, Dan Murphy said: “Nothing that was said or done in court can bring back our son, Stephen. Nevertheless, we are happy with the way in which the court dealt with the matter.”

The two counts to which managing director Michael O’Flynn pleaded guilty as a representative of the company, related to failing to provide adequate protection on the site for the health and safety of people not employed by the company.

Judge Moran referred to evidence of health and safety inspector Alan Costello that the area of land was not properly fenced and the barrel should not have been left out in the open. The judge cited further points made by the inspector that there was no one cause for the tragedy but that a number of acts contributed to it. He rejected evidence by Michael Kelleher, one of the directors of O’Flynn Construction Co Ltd, that they were not aware before the tragedy that children were going on to the site: “If they did not know they should have known. Children are always curious.”

The judge said the cause of the accident was not that someone lit a fire and the barrel exploded. He said that was the last act that led to it and that the first was the inadequate fencing, the second was the absence of security at the time and the third was that the barrel was left out in the open.

Defence barrister James O’Mahony said the company had a system in place that required the barrel to be under lock and key.

“Unfortunately one of our employees did not adhere to the system. We have to accept the legal consequences that flowed from that. The barrel should not have been where it was.

“If young people want to get on to a building site to play it is next to impossible to keep them out. But some persons interfered with a 45-gallon drum, lighting a fire, putting it in the fire. It was inappropriate behaviour. My clients cannot have foreseen this,” said Mr O’Mahony.

He said that there was no suggestion the deceased had any involvement in lighting the fire.

Mr Kelleher said, three days before the tragedy, they had employed a security firm at the site because equipment had been stolen days earlier.

Mr Costello from the Health and Safety Authority said, since the incident at the centre of the case, the company had put up proper barriers and co-operated with the investigation.