Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the Senators who contributed to the debate which was very well informed. In many respects, it is unfortunate that the reach of a debate such as this is relatively limited, but it serves to highlight the importance of having a week such as this to focus intently on specific issues. Several Members referred to the fact that every community, if not every family, is aware of the graphic consequences of a fatal accident or a significant injury on a farm. The core message of Farm Safety Week is "Who will fill your boots?". It is a catchy phrase that serves to concentrate the mind, but, unfortunately, I am personally aware of the impact of such incidents as I have seen it at close quarters. I am also aware of the impact on local communities. Reference was made to the use of power take-off, PTO, shafts, something of which I am personally very much aware. I appreciate the sentiments behind the points raised.

I am loath to load issues onto the education system, something that is proposed, even though it is well intentioned, in many debates. There is the notion that the education system must solve everything for us, but if we were to go down that road - there have been many bolt-ons to the curriculum - one would wonder where we would stop. I salute the initiative of local schools, particularly in rural areas, that are attuned to this debate, perhaps spurred on by local incidents. In this regard, reference was made to GAA clubs which have also reacted. We need to get to a situation where we will not be reacting, where we will be in control of the agenda and setting the template to have an accident-free farming environment. That is the ambition of all the players involved.

Reference has been made to the fact that this issue crosses many agencies and Departments, as it does when one stops to think about it. In many respects, that is a good aspect. The statutory approach, Departments and agencies can achieve a certain amount, but the harmony achieved with a buy-in by voluntary organisations gives us a more holistic approach. This is evident in the Farm Safety Council where a great number of stakeholders are represented, resulting in a better reach and a better community buy-in as regards what the State and everybody else is trying to achieve. That is probably the best template there is.

Senator Maura Hopkins made a very telling contribution about the farmer being a Jack of all trades. I do not mean that in a pejorative sense, but very often he or she has to be the plumber, the electrician and the welder, as well as the farmer. In an environment in which he or she often works alone, this brings a great many additional pressures. We need to get the message across that farmers need to be gentler with themselves. Several Members alluded to the financial pressures farmers were under, but it would not be a good message to send that we should boil down safety issues to the equivalent of financial circumstances. If one was to stand in the boots of families who have been in this space and suffered, at the end of the day it is not really about money. We need to acknowledge separately the financial difficulties being experienced in farming - I am acutely conscious of them in the context of commodity prices - but the need for farm safety is above and beyond all of them. We need to be uncompromising in sending the message that we need to create an awareness of the need for farm safety and we need to assist farmers in so far as we can. Sometimes that will be in the form of financial assistance and there is such assistance available, but we need to create an awareness of the fact that having a safe working environment is in a farmer's best interests. The consequences of not having a safe working environment on a farm are horrendous.

Reference was made to many other issues in the context of Brexit and commodity prices. I did not receive any notification that these matters would be raised, but I want to make two specific observations. The first is that in the context of Brexit, we need to be extremely careful that we do not exacerbate what is a significant challenge for us. In terms of media commentary, well intentioned as it may be, we run the risk of talking ourselves into a bigger crisis than what we are facing. We need to be acutely conscious of this.With respect to Senator Mac Lochlainn's point on the CAP budget, the situation is very clear. The CAP budget is committed under the current CAP arrangements up to 2020. Notwithstanding commentaries about remarks in other states about the CAP budget, that is the legal situation. Farmers are under enough pressure, and raising questions about whether their CAP entitlements are secure does not help the situation.

Some Members referred to the knowledge transfer groups, which are being funded under the rural development programme, and proposed that there should be a specific knowledge transfer initiative in the area of farm safety. I am not so sure about that. We are reaching about 27,000 farmers through knowledge transfers, and that is across a range of different farming initiatives including the areas of beef, sheep, dairy, tillage, poultry and pigs. Farm safety requirements are at the heart of all of those enterprises and the fact they are included as a module in all those specific disciplines illustrates the attractiveness of it.

Senator Paul Daly made a very telling observation on the issue of farmers' mental health and I acknowledge it is a serious issue having regard to the isolation of farmers. One of the great benefits of the knowledge transfer groups is that it brings farmers together. Those groups result in ten, 12 or 14 farmers getting together and a problem shared is a problem halved. They get benefits in terms of learning about new technologies and of the adaptation of them to their farms, they get the farm safety module and they also have an avenue to tackle the issue of the isolation that farming involves. That is a very significant issue. I am very aware, as all Members are, of mental health issues generally and the specific issues around rural isolation. Bringing farmers together is one of the great gains of the knowledge transfer groups.

I want to take up the point raised by Senator Grace O'Sullivan in respect of glyphosate. We can ill afford an àla carteapproach to science. I am not an expert in this area but I take the advice of experts. No flags have been raised by the Food Safety Authority or the European Food Safety Authority on the use of glyphosate. That approval of glyphosate now comes with additional terms and conditions and those are the terms and conditions to which we will adhere.

I note the Senator made reference to glyphosate as a possible carcinogenic probably causing cancer, but that is not a scientific analysis. We need to make sure that science-based, peer-reviewed studies are at the heart of the decisions we make. I would certainly be led and said in that regard on the glyphosate issue, as well as on a whole range of other areas. We could have a very interesting debate on climate change but we need to accept the science on that as well. The Senator made reference to the ozone layer. Informed decision-making must be based on peer-reviewed science. If one Googles any topic, one can get reports to fit one's purpose. When we are making critical decisions we need to use peer-reviewed science. That was at the heart of the decision on glyphosate.

I very much have enjoyed the debate. It has been extremely informative. Many opinions were expressed and a range of points were made. Previous speakers also alluded to the Grange open day organised by Teagasc yesterday. In the context of farm accidents, that open day had a dual purpose. One purpose was to focus on Farm Safety Week and the other was to focus on new initiatives in the beef area.

One of the interesting companies that I came across yesterday was one based in Tipperary, the name of which escapes me momentarily. It was developing a prototype of a monitoring system on safety associated with the agitation of slurry and the gases associated with it. As Members know, numerous farm deaths have been attributed to this. This ties into Senator Lombard's point about mobile phones being a critical part of one's farm safety toolkit. The system being developed by this company links the detection of gas to sending a message to a series of preset numbers that would alert others to the fact that gas levels had reached a certain level in one's working environment. That company is hoping to develop the prototype of that monitoring system and indicated that hopefully it would be bringing it to fruition by the time of the National Ploughing Championships later in the year. It is a very innovative project and I hope it gets off the ground. For a relatively small amount of money, this would be a critical device in terms of delivering practical solutions to farm safety issues.

I thank all the Members for their contributions. I acknowledge the role the Seanad played in previous reports it produced on this area, and role played by the rapporteur, Senator Conway, on these matters.