The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of a 13-year-old boy after an accident on a building site in Mullingar, Co Westmeath yesterday.
Joshua Gribble was playing in a concrete pipe on the site, just off the Dublin Road, with his sister and two friends when it collapsed on top of him.
One of his friends ran to his home nearby in a new housing development. Joshua's father immediately alerted the emergency services. The boy was rushed to Mullingar Regional Hospital but died shortly afterwards.
The site was closed down and preserved for technical examination, which was carried out yesterday. The site is adjacent to the new Mullingar Park Hotel development.
The €18 million, four star hotel, was due to open this weekend but this has been postponed as a mark of respect for the family.
A post mortem was being carried out. The results are not yet known.
The HSA will examine whether the developers or site owners took sufficient steps to protect the site, although officials said it was too early to come to any conclusions.
Deaths of children on building sites have been falling recently. None were killed on building sites last year, compared to four in 2001, according to the HSA.
Anyone responsible for maintaining a building site is obliged to protect the area under a number of pieces of legislation, however, many are failing to comply with their basic obligations, according to official figures.
Construction regulations arising from the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act (1989) oblige developers or site owners to draw up safety plans at the design stage of a project.
Clients must also appoint special safety officers, however, only half do.
Earlier this year Cork developers, O'Flynn Construction, were fined €200,000 after a nine-year-old boy died when a barrel containing wood preservative exploded at a building site.
The firm pleaded guilty to two breaches of health and safety legislation, included failing to provide adequate fencing around the site and failing to ensure the public were not exposed to risk.
In general, however, the HSA said safety standards are improving and that the rate of fatalities per 100,000 construction workers has almost halved since 1998. Nevertheless, statistics show construction sites are still a highly dangerous area.
Twenty-one people died in construction site accidents last year. The Construction Industry Federation's director of safety, Mr Peter McCabe, however, said the industry had made great strides in recent years.
He added that new guidelines to further reinforce safety on building sites were about to be drawn up.
"The awareness of the need to maintain safety is tremendous and this is reflected in the HSA reports.
"Overall, the industry is performing well against any measure," Mr McCabe said.