Plastic Water Piping (PWP) Limited pleaded guilty to three charges of breaching the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and were instructed under the Probation Act to donate €1,000 to charity.
The case follows an incident in which Thomas O ‘Mahoney, a member of the public, was fatally injured on 14 August 2020 when he was struck by a reversing Nightline/UPS courier van collecting and delivering parcels at the Plastic Water Piping Limited premises in New Ross, Co. Wexford.
Plastic Water Piping Limited failed to manage and conduct their undertaking in such a way as to ensure, as far as was reasonably practical, that individuals at the place of work, not being their employees, were not exposed to risks to their safety, health or welfare. Specifically, they failed to provide a traffic management system to safely control and manage the movement of vehicles and pedestrians at their place of work and thus were in breach of Section 12 of the Health, Safety and Welfare at Work Act 2005.
Mark Cullen, Assistant Chief Executive of the Health and Safety Authority, said: “The movement of vehicles in workplaces where pedestrians are present is a well-known hazard that duty holders must carry out a risk assessment for in order to identify the necessary control measures to eliminate or reduce the risks to a reasonably practicable level.
“In this case, the failure by Plastic Water Piping Limited to undertake a risk assessment and identify the appropriate control measures led to this incident which was entirely foreseeable and preventable.”
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