Mr. Peter Gohery:

I am delighted to be here today to tell my story. Six years ago I never thought I would make it to this place or even to Dublin. I was very involved in construction, worked at home on the farm and would have known a lot about safety. Yet, when I went home in the evening, everything went out the window. Farm safety was just forgotten about. I never thought it could happen to me but when I had people working for me, I made sure that every safety mechanism was in place for them. Six years ago it was a lovely, fine day and we were probably under pressure to get work done. At around 6 p.m. on that Saturday evening I let my guard down and stood too close to a power shaft that was unguarded, a piece of loose clothing got caught and I lost my leg. I very nearly lost the second leg too and it took months to recover.

At that time, when I went to hospital there were very few people to talk to and that is why I got involved with Embrace FARM. At the time, the organisation seemed to me to be all about those who had gone and there was nothing about the survivor but when I talked to Brian and Norma Rohan, I realised that they were there for the likes of me too, namely, a survivor. There were very few survivors to whom I could talk. I spent 16 weeks in Dún Laoghaire but there was nothing there for a farmer or an amputee. That is something that needs to be highlighted and funding for organisations like Embrace FARM is very important. There are farmers who will talk to members of Embrace but they will not talk to a professional. Members of Embrace have been involved in the same or similar situations and are able to relate to other farmers. There is no point in talking to someone who reads about these situations from textbooks and who does not really know what it is like. To take the example of child birth, I can read all about it but can I describe the pain of it? No, I cannot because I have never experienced it.

On the issue of insurance, I was involved with the banks and had insurance for both personal accident and critical injury. One of the banks had no problem in paying out. The other bank was involved with the business. My wife phoned them to find out what they would pay out and they asked what had happened. She told them that I had lost the leg and that the other one was just barely hanging on. They told her to get back to them when I lost the other leg and they would pay out then because the policy stipulated that I had to lose two legs in order to collect. I know what people are going through when they cannot get insurance. I know what is going on there.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine also needs to cop on, for want of a better phrase. I remember when departmental officials came out to do a farm inspection. I was walking around on crutches but they had no sympathy for me. It is not as if we are trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. This all needs to be examined. The question is often asked as to why we do not make more safety-based investments on farms. If we were getting a better price for our product we would have more money to do so, like the big companies which are able to invest in safety. A contributor spoke earlier about working with Elan, which has an enormous budget for health and safety. Unfortunately, the budget on farms is limited. I am a suckler and beef farmer and the average take home pay for farmers like me last year was about €10,000. If the transmission fails on the machine in the morning, it is gone but I still have to support my family. That is where we are coming from. We do not have big budgets on farms. If anyone would like to talk more to me about this, I am happy to give my phone number to the committee and members can call me at any point. Others wish to speak today so I will let them continue.