Stormont department satisfied with culvert safety measures, inquest hears

The Noah Donohoe inquest has heard that a government department was satisfied with safety measures around public access to a culvert close to where the young boy disappeared in 2020.

The body of the 14-year-old boy was found more than 600 metres downstream from the culvert inlet which is located behind private houses at Northwood Road in north Belfast.

A high steel security fence restricts public access to the culvert from Linear Park, an adjacent public park.

The inquest has been considering if additional safety measures could have been in place to restrict public access from other sides of the culvert.

Dr Mark Cooper, an expert witness on health and safety, indicated that "a deterrent fence" could have been erected in the area where Noah went missing behind the Northwood Road houses.

During cross examination of the witness, a barrister for the Department for Infrastructure explained the background to maintenance and access practices around the culvert inlet.

She outlined how the residents of nearby houses are regarded as "riparian owners" which means they own the land between their homes and the watercourse at the culvert.

The lawyer said it was therefore difficult for the department to fence-off land it does not own because riparian owners have a right of access to the land they own.

She also quoted from a departmental report which stated that "at no time has there been any evidence such as graffiti or litter at the structure to indicate that the site is subject to unauthorised access or anti-social behaviour".

The barrister also highlighted another part of the same departmental report which stated: "The department operation teams who were inspecting the culvert inlet screen on at least a weekly basis did not report any evidence to suggest that unauthorised access was occurring."

She went on to explain that residents in the area were "vigilant and alert" and the area around the culvert was not "an abandoned area of land".

The lawyer said the residents regarded the land "as their own" and this "greatly diminished" the chance of any unauthorised or inappropriate" access to the culvert by members of the public.

The expert health and safety witness, Dr Cooper, said additional security measures would have provided round the clock protection, and he believed the residents' oversight could not be "as robust as physical hardware".

He also said he believed that even if the likelihood of public access to a confined space was low, the consequences could be very serious.

The witness said the culvert was a "very dangerous confined space" and he believed it was "a dangerous place where you'd want people to be kept out of".

The Department for Infrastructure lawyer told the inquest that there was "no known public access" prior to 2020.

Asked by the barrister about conflicting evidence from another expert witness to some aspects of his findings, Dr Cooper replied: "This is not a precise science."

He added: "People believe it is an exact science, and it isn't."

The inquest continues.