US safety officials have imposed heavy fines on building contractors who failed to protect two Irish workers killed in a scaffolding collapse on August 11th last.
The young men were removing bricks on the sixth storey of a building site in Quincy, near Boston, Massachusetts, when scaffolding gave way, plunging them 65 feet to the ground. It took more than an hour for 35 rescuers to dig their bodies out of 15 feet of rubble.
They were Mr Ronan Stewart (23), of Dundalk, Co Louth, who was on pre-discharge leave from the Defence Forces, and Mr Shane McGettigan (21), of Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim, son of singer/songwriter Charlie McGettigan, who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 with the song Rock'n'Roll Kids.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded the scaffolding the two men were working on was overloaded with brick, debris and planking. Three Massachusetts companies face $313,700 in fines for ignoring weight limits and failing to train workers.
OSHA imposed $230,600 in fines for four willful violations and one serious violation on Diversified Contracting Inc of Braintree, the primary contractor on the job. Mr Demitri Dasco, president of Diversified, declined to comment, saying the company has not reviewed the report.
GW Construction Co of Brighton was cited for four wilful violations and one serious violation and fined $77,100. GW officials could not be reached for comment.
"Diversified Contracting and GW Construction had sufficient knowledge and experience to have taken the necessary safety precautions, which would have prevented this terrible accident, yet chose not to do so," the OSHA area director, Ms Brenda Gordon, said.
A third company, Metropolitan Scaffold Service Inc of Mendon, was cited for two serious violations and fined $6,000. Officials at Metropolitan did not return phone calls.
The companies have 15 working days to do seek a compromise with the OSHA or contest the fines before an independent review board.
Families of both the men are taking legal actions. It is understood lawyers for Mr Stewart claim he had no experience with scaffolding and was not given any safety training, and that the structure was unstable.