Ms Alma Jordan:

On the area of media, we talk a lot about changing the culture and the behaviour. What we need to do is denormalise our attitudes towards risk. The mainstream media and social media are key in all of this. All too often I see posts of children as young as nine and ten years old, sometimes three and four, left unaccompanied and driving high-end agricultural machinery as if it is some badge of honour. This social media vanity over sanity really needs to be called out. I also call on people within the media, when they are sharing videos and images, to comply with the safety rules and not undermine the work of us advocates, who are working so hard to denormalise these attitudes towards risks. Not only is it extremely frustrating and upsetting but this behaviour is also triggering people who have not been so lucky and have not got away with it. They are looking at this taking place and it is a slap in the face for these poor people to see it. If you cannot do it for the advocates working on this, think of the farm families who have been left behind and are dealing with this particular loss.

Denormalising the risk is vital. I created a media charter on this, the farm safety media charter, which I have yet to launch. It is a set of guidelines the media can follow when putting images and visuals on an agricultural basis out there. We would love to launch it. It has been used for the past 20 years in the United States and I am on the child agricultural safety network leadership team there. Australia has just started doing it. We had the idea too but we are just waiting to launch it, which it is a pity. It would go a long way towards changing the culture and behaviour.

To follow up on what Ms Rohan was saying, access to funding is crucial. I hear year on year that the work I do is great and that it is where it all needs to start. Our children are highly influential in this topic. I have had children as young as four years old participate in my events, explaining to their fathers why standing in the area of agitation is dangerous or what safety sign needs to go up and where, and saying, "No, Daddy, I am not allowed on that tractor; I am only four." They are extremely influential. Pester power is key. I worked for quite a while within the green schools programme and saw exactly how influential kids can be. Social change can happen with them. It is normal and normalises with them. When it is normal with them, it is in there forever. We are looking at a socially sustainable safer future on our farms just by engaging our children. The resources I have created are simple and fun. We even have a manual where I work alongside An Garda Síochána in its community outreach programmes. We are helping it to deliver farm safety events in their own locality.

Tapping into what is already out there is key. There are many of us working in this space and bringing us all together to work in a much more fluid and proactive manner is not only cost effective but will help us see results. I was here in May 2015, very new into this game, and I was included in a Seanad report on farm safety. Many of us are still in this room today and are still having this conversation. We need to move this on. We have the ideas and resources. Help us fund what we do so the objectives and work we do, which benefits so many, can continue without any blockades or barriers.