A postmortem is due to be carried out on the body of a 14-year-old boy who died while working on his grandfather’s farm in Co Limerick yesterday.
The teenager, named locally as Jack Lyons from Clouncagh, Ballingarry, Co Limerick, was on the farm at Ahalin, Ballingarry, in the west of the county shortly before 3pm when the incident occurred.
The 14-year-old was power-hosing a shed with a friend when he died. It’s believed he may have been electrocuted.
He was brought by ambulance to University Hospital Limerick where he was pronounced dead.
A Health and Safety Authority investigation is underway.
Local County Councillor Jerome Scanlan said last night the entire community was numbed by news of the 14-year-old’s death.
Cllr Scanlan said the Lyons family are extremely well known in the locality and Jack played for the local Deel Rangers hurling team.
“It is just heartbreaking for his family and his grandparents. The whole community are numbed by what has happened,” he said.
In a separate incident a young girl has died from injuries sustained on her parents’ farm in Co Laois on Sunday. She was pronounced dead at Temple St Children’s Hospital last night.
The deaths bring to five the number of farm fatalities this year, far less compared with this time last year, when 11 deaths had occurred.
While the proportion of the workforce engaged in farming is about 6 per cent, farming accounts for almost half of work place deaths.
Last Friday a farmer in his 50s died in a farm accident in Co Cavan. Patrick Bradley, from Mountnugent, Co Cavan, had been working with bales and a skid loader early that day but the alarm was raised when he failed to return home that evening.