Principal leads tributes to young accident victim

A school principal has led tributes to one of his young pupils who died in a tragic accident at his family’s farm in West Cork.

Ciarán Carey, 14, died after he became trapped between a digger and a wall shortly at his family’s farm at Church Cross, near Skibbereen.

The accident happened shortly before 6pm on Wednesday at the family home at Collatrum.

Ciarán was a second-year student at Rossa College, Skibbereen, and principal Stephen Gilbert said the thoughts of the 21 staff and 126 pupils were with the teenager’s family.

Mr Gilbert said students were being offered counselling.

“Ciarán was a very popular student. He was a nice, polite, mannerly young fella and well respected by the staff and his peers. He will be missed by his second-year friends in particular, but because the school is so small he had friends across the year groups. He also played football with our U14 team.”

The principal visited Ciarán’s family yesterday and offered his sympathy. He was joined by deputy principal Tom Foley and John Delea, a home school community liaison teacher.

Ciarán is survived by his parents, Stephen and Norma, older brother and sister Darragh and Aileen, and younger sister Orla.

Mr Gilbert said on hearing of the boy’s death the school put its critical incident management plan into place, which involved making its own team of counsellors available to students.

A member of the National Education Psychology Service (NEPS) was also sent to the school yesterday by the Dept of Education.

Mr Gilbert said a lot of the children “were shocked” by Ciarán’s death.

“All the advice is to keep a routine in place for them and we have done that so far as we can. All the staff are involved in supporting the pupils. It’s helping them to cope.” He said the school would hold a prayer service in Ciarán’s memory today.

Aughadown parish priest Fr Donal Cahill said Ciarán had a great work ethic.

“He was forever out with his father on the farm and was always industrious. He made his family proud, such was his great attitude to life.”

A Garda spokesman said they had offered their sympathies to the Casey family and were treating Ciarán’s death as a very tragic accident.