Boy (14) dies in Limerick farm accident

A 14-year-old boy has died on a farm in Co Limerick.

The teenager was working on his grandfather’s farm in Kilmeedy in the west of the county around 2.45pm yesterday afternoon when the incident occurred.

His body has been removed to University Hospital Limerick where a post mortem will be carried out.

Gardai remain at the scene and the Health and Safety Authority has been contacted. Kilmeedy is some 13km from Newcastle West.

This is the fourth farm fatality this year, far less than compared with this time last year, when 11 deaths had occurred. While the proportion of the workforce engaged in farming is about 6 per cent, farming accounts for almost half of work place deaths.

Last Friday a farmer in his 50s died in a farm accident in Co Cavan . Patrick Bradley, from Mountnugent, Co Cavan, had been working with bales and a skid loader early that day but the alarm was raised when he failed to return home that evening. A search was mounted and his body was discovered in the early hours of Saturday morning.