A sawmill worker who restarted a machine, causing a colleague to be crushed to death, has pleaded guilty to failing to take reasonable care. Michael Lukan was performing repairs inside the machine at Balcas Sawmill outside Enniskillen when his supervisor, Raymond Irwin, restarted it. The incident happened in May 2006, when Mr Lukan was fixing a chain inside the machine.
Prosecuting lawyer Philip Mateer said there had been considerable pressure to keep production going at the sawmill, and that the company is still being investigated by the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSE NI). There ought to have been safety procedures in place whereby the conveyors would not have moved because the circuit would have been isolated, even with Irwin restarting the machines from the console. Although the machine came with these devices, they had been disabled some years previously because they interfered with production.
Mr Mateer commented, "Clearly if these safety procedures had consistently been followed in this plant then the machine would have been locked out which would have meant Mr Lukan could have done his work safely."
Mr Justice McLaughlin bound Mr Irwin over the sum of £2,000, and stressed that Mr Lukan, "Had been killed as a result of a failure to implement a properly structured system to protect the health and safety of him as a person, in a situation where he was working with highly dangerous machines."
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