A Co Roscommon businessman has been fined €350,000 after breaching health and safety laws leading to the death of a 49-year-old worker in April 2006.
Sean Doyle and two companies with which he is associated - Roscommon Building Company and Owencrest Ltd - was fined at a sitting of the Circuit Court this afternoon.
The worker who died, Czeslav Malinowski, received serious head injuries after falling from a teleporter at a construction site.
Sean Doyle was operating a teleporter on a construction site on the main street in Roscommon on Good Friday 2006 when
49-year-old worked as a maintenance man for Mr Doyle’s company and was standing on top of a platform that had been elevated up to 12ft off the ground, while he was power-hosing a building.
Mr Malinowski was not wearing a safety harness and the court heard that Mr Doyle had accidentally struck a lever that made the platform tilt.
He fell to the ground suffering severe head injuries, he later died in hospital.
The Doyle’s have never before been charged with any breaches of health and safety laws but the company admitted the offences.
In a victim impact statement Mr Malinowski's wife, Danuta, said that she had ‘an open-wound in her heart’, which had not healed.
She said she could not believe the accident had happened as her husband had said that he would not be working that day because no one worked in Ireland on Good Friday.
She said she was not seeking revenge in the court proceedings and she had no feeling sof hate towards Mr Doyle.
The Court also learned that Mr and Mrs Malinowski's only son, who was 18, had also died in a car accident some 12 months after the death of his father.
