Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

Deputy Fleming is absolutely right. We had a horror show last year. If I remember correctly, over 30 people died in farms. That was an exceptionally high figure. We do not know whether it was a blip or the beginning of a disturbing trend, but we have been active in this area. We introduced a farm safety scheme during the year. Deaths on farms come from a variety of sources, for example, from animals, slurry pits - that is a common cause - machinery and so on. There are things that can be done, physical investments that can be made, to make the farm safer.

We introduced a grant scheme for farmers. I am pleased to say it was heavily subscribed. Those moneys have been paid or are being paid. The targeted agricultural modernisation scheme comes under the rural development programme. We have built further grant schemes for the same sort of thing. On top of that, part of the rural development programme involves what we call knowledge transfer groups. This is where we bring farmers together in groups. It has been found to be by far the most effective means of providing advice to farmers. We have built a farm safety element to into the curriculum of those groups

What happened last year is very disturbing and we never want to see anything like it again. The Minister has been particularly keen to make that point. A great deal of work is being done by farm organisations and various other voluntary groups. The Irish Farmers Journalhas had major articles on this. There is a serious effort throughout the industry to try to get this down. We had 6,000 applicants for the farm safety scheme last year. We used unspent RDP moneys. The old rural development programme had some unspent money left in the kitty, as it were. There was €12 million. We bundled that up and we are paying it out to the 6,000 farms.

It is an important issue. Our customer service unit has introduced a single point of contact for bereaved families.

On a farm, it is the farmer who can die, leaving the family stranded with all of our schemes, which are not particularly simple. We do not want the family going from Billy to Jack around the State system to try to sort it out.