Mr. Bill Callanan:

Senator Conway referred to legislation. To clarify, there is legislation in place since 2005 which indicates the farms which are subject to that legislation. It is important to note that. Principally, however, we tend to leave decisions in this regard to the Health and Safety Authority. The Department tends to focus on attitude and behavioural change and supporting engineered changes on farms through the grant scheme. Our concern is to create a safer environment for farmers through support with, for example, rewiring, slat replacement and fencing. These are engineered actions on the farm that create a better work environment.

On the question of the independence of relevant organisations, the Department works very strongly with the farm safety partnership advisory committee, a sub-committee of the board of the Health and Safety Authority, and my colleague, Dr. Robert Leonard, is a member of the committee. That forum brings all the partners into one room, including representatives of Teagasc, the farm bodies and companies like FBD, under the chairmanship of the HSA. It creates an avenue for a combined approach to addressing issues and bringing things to light. Each body has its individual responsibilities, but that forum facilitates a combined and united approach.

Senator Comiskey asked about recommendations for the future.

The Minister has shown a strong interest in any recommendations that might emanate from this committee and we will certainly consider what is the most appropriate organisation for their implementation.

Participation in REPS and the knowledge transfer groups is voluntary. Farmers self-select if they want to participate but once they participate there is a mandatory element. They cannot avoid being exposed to farm safety training if they decide to join the schemes. Some 60,000 farmers in REPS would have been in this category and there are 27,000 in the knowledge transfer groups who will now have a greater safety requirement. Representatives of Teagasc are present today and 30,000 of their farmers would have done a mandatory half-day course on the completion of the code of practice to identify the various risks.

In my view, text alerts have proved successful. We are hitting some 90,000 farmers and we use them in a number of different areas. Our belief is that farmers are more attuned to using texts than written letters and there is more likely to be a recognition of the objective of a text because it is quite short and sharp in comparison to a lengthy letter, which may just be fired into the dustbin. As with any such system, however, people become immune to texts if they are overused.

There is no doubt that older farmers are more at risk and the statistics show that 40% of deaths are of older farmers. One can reasonably expect that younger farmers who have accidents are more likely to survive. Their injuries may be serious but not fatal, whereas for older people an injury such as those sustained when dealing with a cow post-calving is more likely to be fatal. The Department has many different measures to support generational change within farms to bring younger farmers into play. For example, the young farmer schemes provide priority access to entitlements under the single farm payment. Under the next grant schemes there will be a dedicated expenditure on farmers under 40 years of age and this will encourage the involvement of younger farmers, who tend to have fewer accidents. Younger farmers will also have been subject to training under FETAC level 6 and will have had exposure to health and safety training as part of their general agricultural education. Many of these measures will be positive in helping to reduce accident rates among farmers.