Mr. Eddie Downey:

The first question was about what we can do now and what we can do going forward, which is really why we are all here. The first thing is to educate young people. We are fully supportive of an occupational health and safety module in all education processes. We need to educate people and to put a proper module in place in all agricultural education to cover that. The TAMS was particularly successful and 6,500 people applied for it. There is an appetite for that, so let us ensure TAMS II is for the full duration and let us get thinking on it.

We suggested a scrappage scheme for PTO shafts a long time ago, which goes along with what has been said here. Currently, if one walks into a workshop to get a cover put on a PTO shaft, the guy behind the desk will tell one that he will give one a brand new one for the same price as the cover.

As a result, one walks out with two shafts - a perfectly new shaft with a cover on it and the lethal weapon with which one came in the door in the first place. The lethal weapon should be scrapped. It is as simple as that. We need a scrappage scheme for that.

Senator Comiskey spoke about the rope or wire that goes behind the PTO shaft to stop it. We have got a lot of people thinking now that they need to stop the PTO when they get off the tractor. At least we have got that far. We really want them to stop the tractor and apply the handbrake. Everybody talks about the big cost issues in this context, but these things do not cost money. We should not put cost in front of this as a problem. It would be better to deal with the things that cost nothing first. We need to realise that money is scarce out there. It costs nothing to transmit a simple message like "stop that tractor, pull that handbrake and put down that loader". That is what we need to do.

Senator Bradford spoke about the increase in milk activity. I suggest we can work quite safely along the way and make things different there.

Senator Mary Ann O'Brien asked whether we are working together. Everybody in this industry and others is working together. There is no division on this, as far as I can see. Teagasc, the Health and Safety Authority, everybody represented at this meeting and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are working together to try to reduce the number of deaths. The aim of all the campaigns is to save lives. Everybody is working to the same end. There is no difficulty at all with that.

We were also asked about farm signage. I would have a difficulty with putting up signs saying that there have been no accidents. Mr. Comer quite rightly pointed out that this would be just too raw and too difficult for people on farms where there have been accidents. When I was campaigning right around the country to become president of the IFA, I was told by canvassers in many parts of the country that we should not visit a certain farm because there had been an accident there. While I do not think we need to highlight that, I agree that we need loads of other signage on farms. There is a lot of signage on farms already. Signs are put up to identify where dangers exist. We are working towards getting more signs out there for people.