Mr. Pat Griffin:

No child has been killed in a tractor. In terms of seven year olds on a farm, the choice can never be whether to leave them in the tractor or in the yard. We have looked, sadly, at a number of child fatalities on farms. In the vast majority of them, the child was in the yard and was either reversed over or hit by a machine. Our sense of it is that children are commonly getting spins in a tractor, which is hugely exciting for a very young child. I have witnessed this myself. Children of a very young age will come down to the yard unsupervised and without the knowledge of the parent. The parent is driving the tractor and suddenly the child is in the yard. The mother can come home from town with her very young children and, while she is doing something, a child hears the tractor and disappears down into the yard very quickly. For a child, the sound of a tractor, after the excitement of getting spins on one, is like honey to a bee. The child will go down to it. This is something about which we are hugely concerned. We must recognise that children of that age do not have sense. They must be supervised. Given the number of children who have been killed on farms, we have to deal with the issue of carrying children in the cabs of tractors. It is a very difficult rule to make and to set it out in black and white. However, we are trying to prevent situations in which children get excited by tractors, run down to the yard and get crushed.