Mr. Pat Griffin:

The dreadful situation where children are being killed on farms has been an issue we have been trying to tackle for many years. Fifteen years ago, we developed a code of practice for preventing accidents involving children and young persons on farms. Within that, we tried to set certain parameters for activity involving children on farms. One of the issues is one must be over 14 to drive a tractor on a farm. Another issue is that children under the age of seven should not be carried in the cab of tractors or other farm machinery.

At the time, the setting of that age bracket was linked to the physical development of a child. When a child is born, his or her skull is in seven pieces and then it knits and comes to full strength when the child is aged eight. It was recognised that a child being carried in the cab of a tractor, if he or she got a severe bang in the head, could suffer brain injury, and that is why the age of seven to prevent children from being carried in tractors was chosen.

A more modern reason for it now is that many of these tractors are touch-sensitive controlled and if one has a child aged under seven years in a tractor and he or she reaches out and operates any of these controls when, perhaps, his or her father gets down to go to the back or front of the tractor to do something, the child could cause a serious injury or death to the parent.

We came out at the end of 2014 with an announcement that we would try to be tougher on three issues. Those three issues were that we would consider on a case-by-case basis to go straight to prosecution of farmers who may have unguarded PTO shafts or who would leave slurry tanks open with a risk of persons falling in, and where farmers were carrying children under the age of seven in the tractor. The primary reason for the one involving a child is that we believe that if children are carried in tractors commonly, when the farmer goes down to the yard to do work and his mind is on the work, a child, at the first opportunity when he or she hears the tractor operating, will go down to the yard, and children are often reversed over or crushed. That is the reason we tried to bring in these stronger rules. We have no wish to make the work of the farmer more difficult. We would say that if farmers comply with those three basic issues where we really need to implement improved standards, they have nothing to fear from the inspector. We will help them and be co-operative.

On the question of why last year was so bad for farm deaths, there was a 40% increase in output in the agricultural sector in 2014. If there is a 40% increase in output, there certainly will be more work and greater intensity. There is more work going on and there is more risk.

A second issue is the fodder crisis. The fodder crisis was followed last year by probably the best year's growth of grass ever experienced. Farmers filled their silage pits to the hilt and then found that they still had grass to cut, and they cut bagged silage. The country is covered with mountains of bagged silage and quite a number of the deaths in 2014 occurred in handling such bagged silage or round bales.

A third issue in farm deaths is the lack of help on the farm. The best year ever for farm deaths, and still it was dreadful, was when there were 11 deaths in 2009. The reason for that was the economic collapse in Ireland where the construction sites closed down and many of the sons and daughters of farmers went back to the farm. In 2009, no person over the age of 65 was killed on the farm because there was help around. However, that was suddenly followed by another bad year where there were 25 deaths where these sons and daughters emigrated. It is quite a complex area to identify why the spike happened last year but I believe some of those issues are in that.