Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

This is primarily a machinery and livestock issue with reference to the handling of powerful animals, some of which are unpredictable, particularly bulls. The number of bull beef animals has increased as a proportion of the stock. In the past there would have been a lot of bullocks whereas now there are a lot of young bulls being produced for beef, which carries with it some risk.

On the use of machinery, 14 and 15 year olds regularly drive large tractors in farmyards and pick up and deliver grain between fields and farmyards. We need to redouble our efforts in this regard and look at ways by which we can be more effective.

This is a problem across the European Union. Ireland's figures for fatalities are not that different from those in most other European countries.

What Deputy Harrington has referred to is essentially a device which, if one falls into the water, will immediately send a signal to the recuse services, which can dramatically reduce the likelihood of fatalities at sea. For some extraordinary reason, we have made huge progress in getting people to wear life jackets in the marine leisure sector, but little or no progress has been made in getting fishermen to wear them. We launched a life jacket campaign over the summer but I am not sure it made a huge difference because for some reason fishermen seem to think they will never fall in the water. I have considered the personal beacon approach used to good effect by the RNLI in the UK. Given the division of rescue functions between the Coast Guard and the RNLI, we cannot simply copy UK policy to Ireland because both organisations will need to be able to pick up signals from the beacon. We will investigate the matter further. As it is an area in which I have close personal experience, I am anxious to do the right thing.

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