Over a decade has passed since the death of 14-year-old Darren Shanahan in a quad bike accident on his family farm in Co Tipperary, but for his sister Irene Moclair and their family, the grief is still raw.

“It never went away,” she explains to the Irish Farmers Journal.

To this day, they still don’t know how the accident really happened or why Darren did not put his helmet on, as he’d been warned to by his parents, on that day back on 14 April 2008.

“It will be one of the darkest days I care to remember,” Irene says.

“Little did we think that a couple of months after Darren got a quad bike for Christmas, we would be faced with this devastating tragedy.

“At the time, Darren was only 14 years old. However, he had the build of a man and the intelligence of a lad way ahead of his years.

“Only weeks previous to his death, he had ploughed over 30ac of our home farm land. He was well accustomed to dealing with machinery and my parents always had him well educated in terms of safety and training of the use of machinery.”

The tragic accident

“On the evening in question, Darren offered to stay back and tidy up things on the farm. When my dad [Gerry] got back, he was surprised that Darren wasn’t back home and even more strangely that he could not hear the noise of the quad.

“We were all immediately alarmed. My parents, Gerry and Geraldine, went one direction and I went another. And it was then that my parents came across the overturned bike. My mum immediately did CPR on Darren.

“An ambulance arrived, but unfortunately he was pronounced dead at the scene. Darren was not wearing a helmet that day. We suspect that he was tired after a day’s work and probably thought he’d be fine, as there were only a few small bits to be done.

“Sadly, the bike overturned and Darren’s brain stem was severed. I do often think if Darren was wearing a helmet, he would have been saved. We will never know. This split second changed our lives forever. This lapse of judgement not to wear a helmet can never be fixed.”

Lasting legacy

A Health and Safety (HSA) report in 2018 showed that farm vehicles were still one of the main causes of injury and death on farms, with up to 20% of all farm vehicle fatalities involving quad bikes.

“The death of Darren has had a profound and long-lasting impact on our family,” Irene says.

“Every year there is an empty space at our Christmas table and not a day goes by where I don’t long for his presence and wish he was around.”