A man fell through a roof. He was 31. The person who hired him had no employer's liability insurance. The court case that followed is a masterclass in what that decision actually costs.

The details matter. A business owner engaged a worker to carry out roofing work. No written contract. No insurance. No fall protection worth mentioning. The worker went through the roof and suffered serious injuries. The owner was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced. The fine landed in five figures. The worker faced a recovery process that no court outcome can fully address.

This is not a freak incident. It is a predictable outcome of a decision made before anyone set foot on that roof.

What "No Insurance" Actually Means in Practice

Employer's liability insurance is not a formality. Under Irish law, if you engage someone to do work and you direct how that work is done, you are almost certainly their employer in the eyes of the Health and Safety Authority. The label you use, sole trader, subcontractor, helper, does not change that. The relationship does.

When a claim arises and there is no insurance, the injured person cannot access a fund that pays out quickly and fairly. They are left pursuing the individual who hired them through civil courts. If that individual has no assets, the injured worker gets nothing, or they pursue the Motor Insurers Bureau equivalent for uninsured employers. That process is slow, adversarial, and exhausting for someone already dealing with a serious injury.

The owner, meanwhile, faces prosecution by the HSA on top of any civil proceedings. Criminal conviction. Court costs. Fines. Potential disqualification. A record that follows them into every future tender, partnership, and job application.

Skipping insurance does not save money. It defers a much larger bill to the worst possible moment.

The Roofing Context Is Not a Coincidence

Roofwork sits at the top of the injury statistics. Falls from height remain the leading cause of fatal and serious injury on Irish construction sites. Fragile roofs, unprotected edges, and skylights create specific hazards that require specific controls. Crawl boards. Edge protection. Nets. Warning lines. Permits to work.

None of those controls cost as much as what happens when they are absent.

Falls through roofs are not random. They follow a pattern: no plan, no protection, no insurance, and then a prosecution that reads almost identically to the one before it. The HSA has documented this pattern for years. The sentencing reports keep coming.

What This Case Means for Anyone Who Hires Workers

If you are a contractor, a small business owner, or a sole trader who ever brings someone on to help with a job, you need to answer three questions before that person starts work.

Are you their employer in law? If you tell them where to be, when to be there, and how to do the job, yes. The paperwork is largely irrelevant.

Do you have employer's liability insurance in place? Not public liability. Not a general trade policy that excludes labour. Employer's liability, specifically covering the work being done on that day.

Have you assessed the risk for the task? A roof job is a working at height job. Full stop. It requires a written risk assessment, a method statement, and proper equipment. A verbal briefing in a car park does not count.

If you cannot answer yes to all three, you are not ready to start work.

The Freelancer and "Self-Employed" Trap

A growing number of workers operate as sole traders or freelancers in construction-adjacent trades. Plenty of business owners treat this as a clean escape from employer responsibility. Hire a self-employed person, no liability, no insurance required.

This is wrong. Irish courts and the HSA look at the reality of the arrangement, not what it says on an invoice. If the hiring party controls the work, supplies the materials, and sets the schedule, the worker is likely an employee under health and safety law regardless of their tax status.

The liability gap here is significant. Workers who think they are protected because they are registered as self-employed may discover they have no cover when something goes wrong. Business owners who think a self-employed label insulates them from prosecution will find out differently in a courtroom.

What a Proper Setup Looks Like

Getting this right is not complicated. It is just ignored far too often.

Employer's liability insurance: get a policy that specifically covers the workers you engage, including any self-employed persons you direct. Tell your broker exactly what work is being done. A policy that does not cover roofwork is useless on a roofing job.

Written contracts: they protect you as much as they protect the worker. State who is responsible for what. State what PPE is required. State that safety method statements must be followed.

Risk assessments and method statements: required under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and the Construction Regulations. Not optional. Not something to backdate after an incident.

Competence checks: anyone working at height needs demonstrable competence. A willingness to do the job is not the same thing.

The Sentence Is Not the End of It

Criminal sentencing in these cases is often treated as the conclusion. It is not. After the prosecution comes the civil claim. After the civil claim comes the reputational fallout. After that comes the difficulty getting public liability cover, or winning tenders, or finding subbies willing to work with you.

A business owner who skips insurance to save a few hundred euro a year is not running a lean operation. They are running a business that one incident can permanently close, while leaving an injured worker to deal with the consequences of that decision for the rest of their life.

The 31-year-old who fell through that roof did not make the decision to skip insurance. He had no say in it at all.