‘Sixty-three people went to work last year and didn’t come back’: Lives lost in the workplace remembered
Eight years after her son Lorcan was fatally injured in the workplace, Marian Deasy talks publicly about his death to help cut through the statistics and “put a human face on what happened”.“The statistics are gathered and that’s important,” she said at the annual Workers’ Memorial Day event at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin on Tuesday. “But 63 people went to work last year and didn’t come back ... We need to ask ourselves who those people were, who were their parents, their siblings, their wives, girlfriends, children?”Lorcan (31), an electrician’s assistant from Castlebar, was working alone and fell while dismantling a raised platform during a building refurbishment in Kiltimagh, Co Mayo. READ MOREThree brothers entitled to ownership, by adverse possession, of 34 acres in Co GalwayDublin-based French woman charged with murder of daughter in suspected botched murder-suicide pact in IcelandSpanish authorities freeze Gerry Hutch’s property assets as part of money-laundering investigation‘I asked the woman in the bookshop on a date and she bolted. I feel mortified’“He was working with a ladder but it wasn’t attached to the platform, there were no precautions,” his mother says. “We don’t know whether he fell from the platform or the ladder because there was nobody there.”Colleagues on the other side of a partition heard the impact and the emergency services were called. Lorcan was taken to University Hospital Galway then airlifted to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, where he underwent surgery that evening. However, Lorcan’s head injuries were severe and he died a week later on January 15th, 2018.“They gave us a week to get our heads around it,” Deasy says, “but you never come to terms with it.”Three companies – Ivan Kelly Electrics, which Lorcan worked for; CMS Distribution, where the premises were being refurbished, and Vincent Burke Construction – were fined €32,000 at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court for safety breaches the following year. Legal representatives for the firms expressed regret and said measures had been taken to ensure the breaches would not be repeated. Deasy accepts that life is busy, but says, “The job will always get finished whether you have to stop for five minutes or five hours. [ Concrete products firm fined €80,000 after man died in workplace incidentOpens in new window ]“Nobody will die because of that, but if you take the shortcut, you take the risk.”She has been giving talks to managers at big companies and contractors in the sector to provide a “reality check”, which she says are well received. She also engages with workers, trying to remind them they can very easily become a statistic if precautions are not taken and procedures not observed.“Attitudes need to change,” she says. “There’s a little bit of macho there with guys. I mean, Lorcan was 31. He was young. He was invincible. Young men are invincible. That’s the nature of it. And older men think: ‘I’ve been doing this for years and years and sure, it’s always been okay this way.’ But it only takes one time for it not to be okay.”Minister of State for Employment Alan Dillon acknowledged the work Deasy is doing to highlight the issue under the ‘Live for Lorcan’ banner, a behavioural campaign focused on strengthening workplace safety culture, and the support provided by another Co Mayo firm, Electric Skyline. Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) general secretary Owen Reidy says getting to the stage where nobody dies in the workplace is a choice. “We need to see concrete action from employers, the Government and the European Union to prioritise workplace safety,” he says.Irish Congress of Trade Unions general secretary Owen Reidy addresses the Workers' Memorial Day event at the Garden of Remembrance, Dublin. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) says every workplace fatality is preventable, with its chief executive Mark Cullen noting that seven people have died in such incidents this year. This is well down on the same period 12 months ago, but last year was among the worst on record for workplace fatalities.“Ireland has made real and meaningful progress in improving workplace health and safety since the HSA was established in 1989,” Cullen says. “Despite the tragic loss of life last year, the overall rate of fatalities has been steadily declining. But what 2025 tells us, very clearly, is that progress is not guaranteed.”
