Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the House for the invitation to attend and for devoting so much time to this issue. I congratulate Senators Denis O'Donovan and Martin Conway who acted as chairperson and rapporteur, respectively, for this report. I have read it and looked at the recommendations and will try to accommodate as many of them as possible. Some of the recommendations are already being implemented and I will outline to the House what we are doing in this area.

I welcome those who have taken time to be here this afternoon, including Brian and Norma Rohan from Embrace FARM, Patrick Duffy from Teagasc, Elaine Farrell from the IFA and others who have taken time out to listen to the conclusions and statements on the back of a comprehensive piece of work. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend for the hearings but I assure the House that I have had no shortage of conversations around farm safety over the last two or three years. Some of the actions I will outline that we are putting in place and some of what we are planning is reflective of that.

While we can do a lot and spend a lot of money, the truth is that the innovation that is needed here is a change of mindset on farms. It is all well and good talking about scrappage schemes for PTOs or alarm systems but, ultimately, people need to apply self-discipline and a change of attitude to farm safety. There must be strict rules that farms are not playgrounds for children, certainly in terms of particular areas. I refer in particular to the management of machinery and the handling of livestock which are powerful and unpredictable. We must stop the excuses and start to require that the hard things are done, which involves challenging people, including family, neighbours and fellow members of farming organisations, and working with the Department, the Health and Safety Authority and a multitude of other stakeholders who are trying to change attitudes. I refer for example to the FBD campaign Champions for Change, which is a great one. It is challenging people to think differently about farm safety.

This is no different to the fishing industry which has also had to change. Thank God, we have made significant progress in the last two to three years and the number of fatalities in the fishing industry has dramatically reduced. While it was one too many, only one life was lost last year and one the year before. It was seven lives the year before that. I was shocked by the 30 fatalities on Irish farms last year. The next closest figure to that in the last 11 years was 22. There were only three years in that period when it was over 20. Last year, we had this figure the cause of which we are still trying to get our heads around. Was it just a freak year or is there some trend in agriculture which is making it much more dangerous? When 6% of the working population are suffering the burden, trauma and grief of 60% of workplace fatalities, something is very seriously wrong. This year, 2015, must be the change year with everyone working together from Seanad Éireann to farming organisations, the HSA, my Department, support organisations like Embrace FARM and the young people who are determined to make a difference because of what they may have experienced or on foot of the ideas or innovations they want to bring forward.Everybody is working together and they range from Seanad Éireann, to farming organisations, to the HSA, to my Department, to support organisations like Embrace FARM, to young people who are determined to make a difference because of what they may have experienced or wish to bring forward ideas or innovations. We need to embrace all of that to fundamentally change the way farm families collectively address farm safety in their homes and on their properties. That is the big difference here. Ten years ago, in many ways, the figures for tragedies on farms were a little disguised by the number of tragedies that took place on building sites because so many young men worked on building sites. We were building nearly 90,000 housing units a year which meant four in every ten young men worked on building sites in Ireland, and accidents came with such activity. Due to what has happened in recent years, and in particular last year, a line must be drawn in the sand to say "To this extent, this must stop." Many of us are trying to do that this year and for the future.

It is important to be honest and say that farms are dangerous places. Even if one carries out a safety audit on one's farm, even if one spends a fortune to get the most modern machinery available, even if one has a breeding programme to breed out negative traits from one's herd in terms of temperament, ease of calving, and all of the other things that we are trying to do with better breeding programmes and even if one is the best farmer in the country, sometimes freak accidents happen. Sometimes animals get spooked in a way that nobody can predict. Sometimes, when one is in a tractor or on a powerful piece of machinery, unexpected things happen that result in tragic accidents. Unfortunately, that will always be the case in agriculture as well as fishing. Many farmers in Ireland work on their own. They are up mountains looking after flocks or herds, they plough and harrow on their own and particularly when people are on their own unexpected things can happen that result in accidents. Therefore, we must do everything we can to change what we do control to try to reduce the risk of those accidents occurring. I do not think we have done enough which is why we are spending more money and having this debate. We are trying to reduce that level of risk by using technology, better design and changing attitudes. Quite frankly, we are spending money to reduce the risk on farms to children, elderly people and fit adults who are involved or linked to a farm.

I shall say a final thing about changing attitudes and then I shall talk about the suite of measures the Government is taking. One of the things that really struck me recently, at the Embrace FARM commemoration event and service, was the number of women in attendance who had lost husbands or sons to farm accidents. Women living on farms can play an important role in promoting safety. Some women are farmers themselves while others are involved in work that brings an income into the household. There is a need for families, internally, to challenge one another in terms of attitudes towards these issues. There is also a role for women in the fishing industry to challenge their husbands, before they go to sea, in terms of their approach towards safety, equipment, and communications and so on. No farmer should go to work on their own for the day without being able to contact home. I refer to basic things like carrying a mobile phone, and making sure that one has the capacity to communicate and call for help if required. A safety mindset has nothing to do with technology. We need a change in attitude towards what might go wrong. Unfortunately, many farmers talk about farm safety but they never really apply it to themselves. They never think that they could be the next statistic or the next person being treated in the accident and emergency ward and I know that from my own family. As a family we grew up on the sea and I remember talking about marine safety, drownings and so on but we never thought it could happen to our family. That outlook is what must change in order to really make a difference. We can assist in that and we will seek to effect a change.

Let me talk about some of the things we are doing because they are relevant to the some of the recommendations. On expenditure, we launched the first capital investment programme for farm safety last year which is called the farm safety scheme. We had 6,299 applicants which means the full €12.5 million that was available for the scheme is going to be drawn down. By the way, the scheme is way ahead of the other TAMS programmes which have not all been drawn down. That shows there is an appetite to respond.

In terms of the kind of things that we have asked farmers to do, we have asked them to spend money on their farms to reduce risk but in obvious practical ways. That may mean putting new lids on slurry storage facilities, replacing slats in slatted sheds, erecting better handling facilities such as guards for when one is handling livestock or providing railings on steps. These are practical sensible measures.

In terms of the money, 4,850 applicants out of the original 6,299 have now been approved with an average of four items per approval and the remainder will be approved over the next couple of months. We deliberately put a tight timeframe on the scheme and the money needs to be spent by the end of August. I will not tolerate people seeking an extension unless there is a really good reason for doing so. This scheme is about trying to get people to spend money now. It is not about building up a credit that they can spend over the next couple of years. We want change to happen now on farms to reduce risk in terms of farm safety and that is why the scheme is generous. We will have a follow-on new farm safety scheme. We have learned lessons from the last scheme and will add areas where farmers can spend money. We will spend another considerable chunk of money on a new TAMS II round which will be launched later this year. As part of the new TAMS schemes, whether it is dairy TAMS, young farmer TAMS or livestock management TAMS, a whole series of schemes will be rolled out over the summer and into the autumn.

Before anybody gets money for the new TAMS II schemes it will be mandatory for all applicants to have completed a minimum of a half day's farm safety course. The only exception may be the direct injection slurry system which is a different type of TAMS. One can forget about getting money from my Department for new buildings and extensions, or anything that has to do with changing one's farmyard, if one has not done the half day farm safety course. If farmers want the Department to support them then they need to provide the edge. We want to support and help finance the modernisation of farmyards and, in return, we expect people to at least spend half a day on a certified farm safety course. I do not think that is unreasonable and the initiative is supported by all of the relevant organisations.

A number of people mentioned knowledge transfer groups. They have been very successful and we can do a lot through them. The dairy discussion groups were successful from the start. When I tried to introduce sheep discussion groups I got a lot of criticism at the start of the initiative. Some sheep farmers told me that I was sending them back to school, etc. and asked if I could not just give them the money in some other way for turning up. If I tried to remove discussion groups for sheep now people would march on my Department because they see their value, and not just in terms of monetary support for turning up. Farmers listen to each other an awful lot more than they listen to me or, with respect, to anybody else in this House. Farmers listen to their neighbours when they are sitting next to them talking about what works on their farms and sharing knowledge. The most effective way, in my experience, of changing the way in which farmers approach things is learning from and wanting to get the best from different experiences by other farmers. We need to bring farm safety into that discussion. All of the new knowledge transfer groups, which is a snazzy name for discussion groups, are going to involve a mandatory farm safety course. In that way we will get farmers to talk to each other as well as talk to experts on farm safety and discuss how, in a practical sense, farmers need to respond in order to reduce the risk to themselves and to their families.

I want to talk about Brian and Norma from Embrace FARM.When they came to see me last year, after Embrace FARM was set up, they asked if I would set up a single point of contact in the Department so that families who have had a bereavement or a serious accident on a farm could contact a particular person in the Department who would give them more time and be more flexible with them in terms of the information they need. We get a lot of questions and queries from lobby groups every day - from farming organisations, farmers and people questioning decisions we have made, and also on inspection results and so on. A person might telephone the Department to say she has lost her husband and is trying to find a way of understanding how the farm business works but does not know where to start - she does not even know the deadline for applying for the single farm payment - and she needs to talk to somebody and get some help. That type of call needs to be treated differently. Likewise, if a person's husband - or wife in some cases - or son, or whoever is the key person on the farm, is in hospital or in rehabilitation, there is a need for someone in the Department who is trained and has the time and the approach that is appropriate for that type of call. We now have that single point of contact set up. I understand that the cases it has been dealing with have been quite successful. The number is relatively small but it is really important.

At the Embrace FARM commemoration last year I met a brave young woman trying to raise her family on a farm, having lost her husband in very difficult circumstances in a farm accident, trying to forge a way forward. We want to help those people and give them the flexibility, the options and the time they need, as opposed to adding to their stress levels through missed deadlines, cross-compliance concerns or whatever. We will show flexibility in that regard. I thank Embrace FARM for that suggestion.

In terms of getting the message out, this report has been very helpful. I agree with other speakers who said that if nothing else happens, this report has got quite an amount of media coverage. Things will happen following on from the report. This year, we sent out with our basic payment application packs more than 130,000 leaflets specifically focusing on farm safety and machinery. We will have a different theme each year. Last year it was livestock; this year it is machinery. We are using every opportunity when corresponding with farm families about basic payments or other schemes to raise the issue of farm safety to get a discussion going. Guidelines on building specifications that are being drawn up for the construction of agricultural buildings and structures will include health and safety guidelines as a mandatory aspect. We have a text alert system for farmers if we need to get a reminder out quickly in the event of a deadline change or the extension of an application process for a scheme. We are now using it actively for farm safety, reminding farmers at certain times of the year that they need to be looking out for certain dangers. There are times when more accidents occur - for example, in late spring, when the silage season starts, in the calving season on dairy farms, when slurry storage is at capacity, at harvest time on arable farms, and when there is pressure on families, with young teenagers piking bales and walking after balers making sure they are collected and dropped off. I did this myself for years. There is interaction that normally would not happen at other times of the year between the whole family in trying to get a harvest in before the rain comes. Those are the times of year when we need to be more careful, and we need to get messages out that people will listen to.

We are an active part of the farm safety partnership advisory committee. It is important to recognise the breadth of this committee, which has been place for some time. It comprises organisations such as the Health and Safety Authority, Teagasc, the Irish Farmers' Association, Farm Relief Services, the Farm Tractor and Machinery Trade Association, the Irish Countrywomen's Association, the Health Service Executive, Veterinary Ireland, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, FBD, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association, Macra na Feirme, Professional Agricultural Contractors of Ireland, Irish Rural Link, Agri Aware and a few others that have joined recently. There is a real effort by many people to try to make a difference this year, and we hope it will make an impact. However, it is not yet having the impact we would like. There have been eight fatalities on Irish farms this year, and another person could be added to the number because a farmer on farm machinery died in a road accident which was categorised as a road fatality rather than a farm fatality. The figures are high but not as high as last year. However, last year is not the benchmark against which we want to measure in terms of where we need to be. We need to be in single figures, at worst, in trying to get the figures down. There is no acceptable figure, but certainly, fatality figures in the 20s or high 20s are not acceptable. For every fatality there are hundreds of accidents. For every fatality there are many families who are coping with rehab and lifetime injuries, physical and mental disabilities, trauma and post-traumatic stress, and many other things that scar families deeply. In many cases, members of the family never get over it in terms of the impact on family life.

Some comments were made about slurry gas meters and alarms. I have spoken to Teagasc about this at length. There are many in Teagasc's advisory service or among those who deal with farm safety who would say that although these are interesting pieces of technology, they can sometimes be more damaging than beneficial. When one has an alarm, one assumes that if it is not going off, everything is safe. It is in the very nature of farms that it might be fine for the first couple of weeks but the battery may go dead or the alarm may be disconnected. When people are agitating slurry in a shed, they will say they are fine because the alarm will go off if there is a problem. The reality is that in many cases the alarm will not go off on time and by the time it does go off it may be too late. When one has an alarm one gets sloppy. What is needed is behavioural guidelines on how to agitate slurry. One does not agitate slurry when one is in the same building as it. It should be done from the outside and when the wind direction is appropriate. The Teagasc advisers to whom I spoken about this and who are experts in farm safety are passionately opposed to this technology, but there are others who would make a strong case for it. I am not pretending I am judge and jury here. All I am saying is that there is a downside to an alarm system. It is not like a smoke alarm, because people can survive in smoke for quite a while. The gases that come from agitating a slurry tank can knock one out in five seconds. Once that happens, one is in deep trouble. Other people will come in and try to rescue the person and they will be knocked out also. We have seen in Northern Ireland and here the tragic consequences. All I am saying is that there is a place for technology, and there may be a place for alarm systems, but it is no replacement for sensible, practical guidelines on issues such as wind direction and ventilation to ensure when doing the practical things that have to happen on a farm, such as agitating slurry, people do it in a way that prevents the inhalation of gases in the first place.

The Health and Safety Authority is doing a great many things.Some comments were made regarding the reduction in the number of inspections, which I though were a criticism of the HSA. The HSA does not talk about inspections any more; rather, it talks about farm safety visits. The impression farmers have of inspections is a negative one. When an inspector walks in through the farm gate, the farmer freezes. There are many reasons for that, but we will not go into that today; we can deal with it another day. We want farmers to encourage farm safety visits. It needs to be an educational and not a threatening process. The HSA is saying to me that this is not about inspecting farms. These are visits to help farmers create better farms that are safer places in which to work. We will not solve this problem by having more inspections. We do not solve many things on farms, be it animal welfare issues or cross-compliance issues, by having more inspections. We need to have a certain number of inspections to make sure there is that stick but, in the case of farm safety, changes of attitude are far more likely to happen if we are proactive and positive rather than adopting a critical approach and trying to expose people. The reality is that not too many laws are being broken in farmyards, and farmers could do much more to address farm safety. If farmers do not have a railing or have a broken or cracked slat, they are not breaking any rules, but it is something they need to change. Inspections need to be become farm safety visits, and the HSA is working on that. It is trying to focus its resources on changing attitudes rather than simply making the claim at the end of year that it had X number of inspections and that is its job done. Members might bear that mind.

The HSA also has many initiatives around education and advocacy in schools, as well as at farming events and so on. We have launched some great initiatives, often led by young people, whether they be online or through poetry or imagery in books. There is a great book, the title of which I can always remember, Only a Giant can Lift a Bull, which says a lot about how a child looks at the size and power of livestock on their farms. They may be ushering an animal along with a Wavin pipe or whatever, but if the animal moves in the wrong direction in a serious way they can do nothing about it. It has many interesting stories, including stories about children being carried while standing on baler twine between the two arms at the back of a tractor, watching the PTO shaft spinning around between their legs. That is the type of experience to which many children who grew up on farms can relate, including myself - getting a spin down the road or laneway standing on baler twine, with no proper guard on the PTO shaft. Those types of practice are not breaking the law, but they must not happen any more.

It is strange to make a comparison between climate change and farm safety, but the way attitudes are changing among a new generation towards something their parents would never have thought about is similar to the change in approach to recycling, emissions and so on. In the same way we saw a change in attitudes towards seatbelts and drink driving, we need a change of mindset towards farm safety. Getting young people to target their parents in terms of what is and is not acceptable is appropriate. In that regard, we may have to make some unpopular decisions. We have to ask ourselves the question: is it appropriate for a 15 year old - or a 12 or 14 year old in some cases - to be driving a tractor around a farmyard? It is legal, but is it appropriate? Is it appropriate for a 14 or 15 year old to be bringing in 30 tonnes of grain and tipping it into a dryer? I do not believe it is, even though I was that 15 year old. Without appropriate training, I am not sure that it is. We need to consider making some changes that may cause problems but perhaps are necessary in order to change attitudes and outcomes in terms of the number of tragedies that occur, many of which our farm families struggle to deal with for years afterwards.

Hopefully, that will give the Members a flavour of how we are responding to this issue. It is one that we are taking very seriously. It is probably the highest priority for me this year in terms of policy change. We are obviously implementing the Common Agricultural Policy, which is introducing a great deal of change that has been decided upon at this stage, but when it comes to farm safety and saving lives, this year needs to be the year of change. I thank the Seanad for the contribution Members have made to that discussion and the contribution they will continue to make to it for the remainder of the year as people read these recommendations.