Farm deaths prompt new safety drive
The losses of 17 lives on Irish farms so far this year have sparked the biggest ever Government agricultural safety campaign, it was confirmed today.
Every farmer in the country will receive a safety pack in a bid to lower the high death rate, which is running at over one a month on Irish farms.
More than 160,000 packs containing the new Agriculture Code of Practice will be dispatched to farmers nationwide at a cost of over €1.5m.
Tom Beegan, chief executive of the Health and Safety Authority (HAS), urged farmers to use the pack to ensure safety is an integral aspect of farm operation.
“It is not just farmers who are dying, but their children and elderly relatives. This pack offers a practical means of stopping the ongoing tragedy of farm fatality and injury,” Mr Beegan said.
So far this year 17 people have been killed on Irish farms. One child under four years of age died and 10 people aged 65 or over. Out of these 10 only two were aged less than 70.
The HAS, which presented a copy of the safety pack to the president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Padraig Walshe, confirmed more people have died in agriculture this year than in any other sector.
The only sector approaching a similarly high death rate was construction, with nine people killed.
It is estimated that 3,000 injuries occur on farms each year.
The HAS said every farmer in the country will receive a safety pack along with a copy of the authority’s Farm Safety DVD.
Mr Beegan said both the code and pack had been developed in conjunction with farmers with a view to reducing the serious levels of farm deaths and injuries.
The pack contains the new Code of Practice for Preventing Injury and Occupational Ill Health in Agriculture, risk-assessment documents and copies of a safe system-of-work plan.
As part of the initiative an awareness campaign will begin early next year and a nationwide programme of farm-safety courses will take place.
