Mr. John Dolan:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present my recommendations to it. In particular, I thank Senator Conway for making me aware of this process in the first place. I am a dairy farmer from outside Athlone in County Westmeath. I am married with three children, one of whom is in agricultural college and will farm with me. I worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a quality assurance inspector before becoming a full-time farmer. I know of five people who have lost their lives through farm accidents and this has given me an interest in trying to change the serious death rate in Irish agriculture. As we know, 30 people were killed in agriculture last year. This must change.

As I mentioned previously, I have worked outside agriculture, which many of my farming colleagues have not done. The attitude to work safety in other industries is totally different and safety is accepted as part of normal work practice. I worked in Elan Pharmaceutical Technologies outside Athlone. I would never have been allowed to bring my children into work with me for obvious reasons as it would have been too dangerous, yet I never gave a thought to bringing them on the farm. I am not advocating preventing children from being out on the farm but I am just pointing out the difference in attitudes between industry and agriculture. Attitude is the most important word that will be used here today and it is key to improving the situation. Nobody sets out to kill or injure or to be killed or injured on their farm. A farm is a unique workplace as it is usually located beside the family home and involves help from family labour both young and old. A vast and unique set of skills is also required to run this farm as well. A farmer must be a vet, a mechanic, a labourer, an accountant, a negotiator, a personnel manager and a businessman or businesswoman. In most cases, the farm is run by one person who, at various times of the year, is working very long hours. This is the person who must also be a safety officer now. Unfortunately, many farms are not very profitable so the amount of income and cash available to invest in different measures may not be great. This is no excuse for having a dangerous farm, but it is definitely a factor in some of the dangers around the farms in Ireland.

How do we improve farm safety? We can use a stick approach or a carrot approach. I believe in the carrot more than the stick. Attitudes need to change and this can only happen through education and awareness of the dangers in farming today. I recently ran an information night in Moate which was attended by almost 60 people, many of whom were young people, so there is an interest in farm safety and I think that most of us recognise that the industry has to change. My first recommendation is that every farmer should complete the half-day safety course provided by Teagasc. I believe the cost is €25. This should be voluntary at first but if things do not improve, it should be made compulsory and be part of our code of good farming practice. I think someone said earlier today that nobody would be allowed on a building site without a basic safety course and the same should be true of farming. Regional on-farm safety open days, similar to the normal demonstrations of good management at the various open days I have attended, should be held to show what the practical issues are on farm. Discussion groups were mentioned. I am a member of a discussion group and I think they are the ideal medium for getting the message out there. Discussion groups meetings should be targeted to give live demonstrations on how to repair faulty covers and make farms safer. They should probably be included in one or two meetings per year. We meet every month. That would be the regular meeting of discussion groups.

To incentivise the improvements required we need to extend the successful farm safety scheme. We also need to expand the range of options to include equipment now available, for example a slurry gas detector which one wears on one's belt. It is not included in the present scheme but it is a relatively cheap item at a cost of few hundred euro. It should be included in the next scheme to incentivise it . The person agitating the slurry wears it on his or her belt and it emits an alarm when gas is detected. People cannot detect the gas as it does not smell.

A scrappage scheme was mentioned and I would definitely support this. It should be considered for tractors and dangerous machinery. PTO shafts were mentioned earlier, and it was suggested it would be good to have a switch at the back of the tractor to turn off the PTO shaft. If part of one's clothing is caught in a PTO shaft travelling at 540 revolutions a minute it will be dragged in at 2.4 meters a second, which does not give one much time to reach for a switch to turn it off.

Young tractor drivers should be made display an "L" plate and complete a Teagasc farm safety course before they are given a licence at the age of 16. Often these young drivers, who have little experience of driving, work very long hours with silage outfits, perhaps travelling on a tractor with 10 tonnes to 12 tonnes of grass on a trailer behind it. At least a very basic safety course would make them aware of the dangers associated with the machinery they are driving.

Unfortunately none of us have all of the answers, and no matter how careful we are accidents will happen, but we must try to minimise the dangers with sensible and rational solutions to help people educate themselves, upgrade their farms and save lives.