On Wednesday 19th September 2018 our 24 year old son, who was an electrician, was working on a site at the entrance to Slieve Gullion Forest Park outside Newry.

On this day an Amber warning storm called Storm ALI arrived. At around 11.30am while our son was still on site, a massive tree blew down killing our son and  seriously injuring his manager.

The Health and Safety Executive for Nortern Ireland (HSENI) were contacted by the Police but some time later they refused to attend the scene and investigate.

We at the time, like everyone else, thought that they were investigating his death, only to find out 5 weeks later that they were not. 

After a campaign by myself and Unite Union ( Matthew was a member) HSENI eventually investigated it in February 2020? Eventually they prosecuted the Local Council and our sons employer for Health and Safety at work offences to do with Risk Assessments at the site in 2024. The parties were fined. 

The actual offences had nothing to do with the day Matthew was killed, they were committed in the days weeks and even months before, so our sons name may not have been mentioned in Court. The Public prosecution service ensured that he was mentioned in the court. We had since day one wanted an inquest into our sons death but we were shocked when we recieved a letter from the Coroners office late in 2024, denying us a Coroners inquest. The Coroner would say that all the answers to the Who, What, Were, When and Why had been answered at the court, so an Inquest would not been needed.

But I disagree, as no one has answered why HSENI failed to attend the scene and why we had to fight to get them to investigate as HSENI have a legal obligation to so and also why the Police did not force them to investigate or start their own investigation after HSENI failed to. 

We want an Inquest to expose how badly handled our sons death was dealt with, what we as a family had to do to get an investigation started with the help of UNITE Unions Susan Fitzgerald and to ensure something like this does not happen again and we feel after meeting the HSENI and the PSNI over the last 6 years they are not willing to take action themselves to stop something like this happening to another unfortunate family like ours. 

We feel the Coroner could take action against the parties and ensure this does not happen again. 

This whole incident and process has had a devastating effect on my family and will for the rest of our lives.

We feel that something like this will happen again as both the parties are unwilling to admit to the failures which occurred on that day and the weeks, months and years after and the only way to prevent this is a Coroners Inquest. 

We are currently having to appeal to the Attorney General to have the decision not to hold an inquest overturned. The fight continues.