Firm gets €42k fine after Irish backpacker scalped

An Australian labour-hire company has been fined AUS$60,000 (€42,000) after a young Irish woman was scalped by a fruit-packing machine. One of her ears was also ripped off.

Annie Dunne, from Nenagh, in Tipperary, was working in a packing shed in Shepparton, in Victoria, run by Kalafatis Packing, when she sustained the gruesome injuries.

According to WorkSafe, the body which enforces Australia’s health and safety regulations, two conveyers were being used to deliver pears for distribution. It emerged in court that workers were required to clean the conveyors while they were “energised and moving”.