A judge said yesterday that shortcuts and chances taken on a construction site resulted in an accident in which a workman died.
The man, Mr Donal Brady, of New Inn, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, was working for his son Joseph when the accident happened.
His son's company, Brady Plant Hire, had been sub-contracted by the defendants, Grangevale Enterprises, to do ground works on a development site in Dunleer, Co Louth.
Grangevale Enterprises pleaded guilty in Dundalk Circuit Court to an offence under the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989. The case was prosecuted by the DPP on behalf of the Health and Safety Authority.
The company, of Granary House, William Street, Ardee, Co Louth, was fined €20,000.
The court heard that the deceased man was at the bottom of a trench that was 12 feet deep when the walls collapsed.
At the time his son was in a mechanical digger adjacent to the trench and they had, with a third man, been excavating the trench for a foul water drain.
As they went along excavating the trench they were shoring up the walls of the trench with timber.
Mr Keith Foran, inspector with the HSA, said that on the day of the accident, December 11th, 2002, "for whatever reason they stopped using timbers to support the sides and this resulted in the sides coming in and burying Donal Brady."
"This man was effectively buried in a trench that was dug by his son," the court heard.
Mr Rory Kerr, director of Grangevale, pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to take such measures as were reasonable for a person in his position to take to ensure that all access to or egress from the place of work was safe and without risk to health.
The company had failed to appoint a construction supervisor who would have overseen the ground works, the court heard.
Judge Raymond Groarke said it was a terribly tragic accident and the greatest tragedy of all was that shortcuts and chances were taken that resulted in the accident.
"The sub-contractors had immediate responsibility for seeing the essentials of safety were complied with," he said, but added that there were good reasons why a prosecution was not taken against them.
He said that the employers had equal responsibility to see statutory obligations relating to safety at the site were complied with and if the defendants had invested in safety the accident would not have happened.
He noted that the company has since employed the services of a consultant for advice on how it should deal properly with safety.
Imposing the fine he said it was necessary and appropriate that the courts reflected the seriousness of builders and industrialists maintaining the highest standards of safety.