Workers in processing plants were particularly at risk during the pandemic, a senior trade union official has said.

Gerry Murphy, from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), started his evidence to the Covid-19 Inquiry sitting in Belfast by remembering the 400 people of working age in Northern Ireland who died during the pandemic.

He said he hopes the work of the inquiry as a whole “will aid the creation of a set of circumstances where such a situation will never arise again”.

The inquiry heard that some 30,000 workers in Northern Ireland are employed through agencies, with a large proportion of these during the pandemic working in agriculture and the food processing sector.

It also heard that the highest proportion of deaths among people of working age in the region were among workers in processing plants and machine operatives.

“13.4% of that 400 who lost their lives were in that sector,” Mr Murphy told the inquiry.

Mr Murphy said following the death of a worker at a processing plant, a senior Unite official wrote to the then-first minister Dame Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill raising concern that there should have been mass Covid testing in that sector.

“That never happened. There should have been more unannounced inspections. That didn’t happen either,” he said.

“Unite the Union felt, and we shared this view up to a point as well, that there was some wilful disregarding of the advice on the part of some of the employers.

“Those working in processing plants were particularly at risk, as were those who were in front-facing occupations such as retail – that was the other big proportion of those 400 lives that were lost.”

Mr Murphy was also asked about an engagement forum that the trade unions had taken part in during the early part of the pandemic.

He said it did good work initially, identifying the list of key workers and essential sectors, but later in 2020 it had ceased to function effectively and had effectively ended by 2021.

He suggested that political leaders be asked why the work of the forum did not continue.