Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I will consider the Deputy's suggestion. However, I am not convinced it will be as easy as simply taking responsibility away from the Health and Safety Authority because that body has responsibility for safety in the workplace generally and it has experience in this regard. The problem with farms is that they are a workplace but they are also a home, a playground, a place where family members and their friends hang around. Seasonal workers and neighbours are present on farms. It is, therefore, very difficult to apply the same kind of workplace enforcement of standards to farms as to factories and manufacturing units. This is what makes farming such a complex industry and it is the same in the case of the fishing sector but farming is much closer to the home. It is also the case that farm family members become involved with farm duties at a much younger age and they may be using very large and powerful machinery and this would never be the practice in other sectors. Likewise, very elderly people operate machinery and these are often past the age of retirement if they worked in other sectors.

Safety on farms is a more complex management exercise. The number of Health and Safety Authority farm inspections have been increased significantly this year. The issue of farm safety requires a combined approach on the part of farming organisations, private sector companies involved in farming such as FBD Insurance. The farm safety partnership advisory committee is comprised of many different entities such as Irish Rural Link, the agricultural contractors, Macra na Feirme, IFA, ICMSA, Teagasc. The suggestion that there should be a single departmental unit will not necessarily change the mindset on the farms unless a way can be found to get the message across to them more effectively. I will take on board the Deputy's suggestion and I will discuss it with my officials to see if the situation can be improved.

Just like dealing with road safety, one's success is measured, unfortunately, in the tragic statistics and we need to measure the effectiveness of the current programmes in the same way. This is unfortunate but it is the only measurement we can make.

See this speech in context