David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will not need the eight minutes; I will be fairly brief. I welcome this clear, factual and comprehensive report. It shows the value of Seanad Éireann and also of the Seanad Public Consultations Committee.

I compliment Senator O'Donovan on this initiative and also Senator Martin Conway, who I believe was also very much behind this proposal. They took evidence, reviewed statistics and examined the question of farm safety.

I was very surprised some years ago to learn that that year farm accidents were the highest cause of industrial morbidity. I thought it would be the building industry, but it was farming. That shows the clear significance of this report and its timeliness.

We hear regularly on the wireless of tragedies in farming. I remember a case a year or two ago in Ulster where two or three members of a family - wonderful, vital young men - were killed in the same accident in a slurry pit. These tragedies are avoidable, and I believe that this report will make a significant contribution towards ensuring safety on the farm.

I am very glad that this report has achieved so much publicity because if a report like this one, admirable though it is, is left lying on the shelf it is of no use whatever. We need to alert people, not people in the newsrooms or people like myself sitting in a house in the middle of the city listening at breakfast to a news report. We need to alert the people on the farms who need to take action to increase their knowledge and awareness of farm safety.

One of the most tragic aspects of this is the danger to children, whether it is children improperly driving tractors, getting tangled up in complicated machinery or falling into slurry pits.

A number of the practical suggestions in this report have been referred to but I would like to mention, and it is extremely useful and not terribly expensive, and there might be grants for it, the fitting of a gas meter to slurries so that people would be alerted to the presence of poisonous gas. These gases do not have a strong smell or if they do, it is mixed up with other farmyard smells. A clearly visible meter on the slurry tank, which would alert people to the dangers of noxious gases, would be an extremely good measure.

I welcome very much the scrappage measure. Machinery is expensive. Out of date, badly serviced machinery is dangerous and if it can be taken out of the equation, so much the better.

I am not a member of the GAA - I have been to Croke Park four times - but the GAA is a powerful national organisation.