‘People are asking me what do I need... All I want to do is just see my daughter’

Wiping away tears, Linda Dinsberga spoke movingly about 8-year-old Paula, who was killed in a farm accident on a rented farm at Rusheen, Newtownshandrum, outside Charleville, Co Cork, on Sunday.

She described her beloved daughter, the eldest of four children, as a "bright, intelligent, popular girl".

There were heartbreaking scenes at the Dinsberga home in Limerick yesterday afternoon as shocked friends and relatives visited to offer their condolences.

Linda and her husband Raivo had been returning from a relative’s wedding in their native Latvia late on Sunday night, unaware of the tragic events that had unfolded shortly after 6.30pm.

Gardaí met them after their plane landed at Dublin Airport at midnight, and told them of the accident.

Paula had been staying with family friends who operate a rented farm at Rusheen.

“We just flew home last night. I can’t believe it, oh God. I just want to see her but I can’t,” Linda said.

“We are waiting for [gardaí] to call us and [then] we can go and see her. Everybody asks what I need, but I just want to see my daughter.”

According to gardaí, Paula and a friend, named locally as Kerija Pliesnanis, 11, apparently ran in front of a tractor being driven by the older girl’s father, Edgar.

Mr Pliesnanis slammed on the brakes, causing the tractor’s front loader to fall off, pinning both girls to the ground.

Paula was killed instantly, while Kerija was airlifted to Cork University Hospital, where she remains in a critical but stable condition with serious head and chest injuries.

Meanwhile, a senior garda has said State agencies need to get together and seriously tackle the number of fatalities on farms, especially those involving children.

Superintendent Pat McCarthy, who was brought up on a farm, said he was fully aware of the dangers that children face on them.

This year, five children under the age of 17 have died in farm accidents, one more than in the whole of last year. There was one child death in 2012, three in 2010 and none in 2011 or 2009.

A HSA spokesman said that the recent increase in deaths was “a matter of great concern”.

“This is a horrendous tragedy. I’ve seen a lot of them over the years, but this one was as bad as it gets. Children have to be kept well away from machinery,” said Supt McCarthy.

HSA statistics show that between 2004 and last year 42% of all child deaths on farms involved tractor accidents.

Drowning in slurry pits, or being overcome by fumes from slurry pits, accounted for 21% of deaths and 21% were as a result of accidents involving machinery other than tractors.

Some 16% were due to falling walls or falling bales.