Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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242. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the actions and deadline agreed following the first meeting of the farm safety taskforce in tabular form; and the number of meetings the taskforce has planned in 2018. [14852/18]

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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In view of the ongoing high rate of accidents and fatalities on Irish farms in May 2017 I convened a Roundtable Meeting of the main farming representative organisations along with officials from my Department, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Health and Safety Authority. I co-chaired that meeting with my colleague the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed TD.

Following that meeting a range of suggestions and proposals were received from the farming and agricultural sector organisations on how farm safety might be improved. As some of these suggestions relate to the policy areas of other Government Departments and State Agencies I have set up a Farm Safety Task Force to see how these suggestions can be progressed where possible.

The inaugural meeting of Farm Safety Task Force took place on Tuesday 13th March 2018.

The members of the Task Force have undertaken to carry out a comprehensive review of the suggestions, specific to their respective Departmental and Agency policy areas, with a view to identifying and developing viable and workable action points.

I have asked the Members to report back to me within a few weeks with a view to reconvening the Task Force shortly afterwards to conduct a more detailed analysis of potential actions and the way forward.

It would be premature of me to comment further on the matter at this stage as I do not wish to pre-empt the deliberations of the individual Task Force members by commenting on any potential actions that might yet be undertaken.