Ballina based TD and Minister of State for Labour Affairs and Public Service Transformation Dara Calleary has called for farmers to improve farm safety to help cut down on accidents.
“The challenge is to change behaviour and attitudes fundamentally so that people are always aware of the risk of serious injury or worse,” he told delegates at a recent farm safety conference. “Almost six out of every 10 workplace fatalities are farming related so far this year. This is in a sector which makes up only six per cent of the workforce, although potentially up to 500,000 persons are exposed to risk when family members are included. Any objective observer would rightly conclude that there is something fundamentally amiss.”
He added that it was regrettable the safety first message was taking longer to sink in in agriculture than in other industries, but that attitudes had to change and farmers had to take more care of their personal safety. He also said that a recent study at NUIG showed that male farmers have a poor health profile, with only 35 per cent getting their blood pressure checked annually, 29 per cent taking regular exercise, and only 26 per cent protecting their skin from the sun. Dep Calleary also pointed out that farmers who don’t properly follow manual handling guidelines and guidelines for handling chemicals are putting themselves at extra risk. He urged all farmers to take advantage of courses run by Teagasc which will help farmers around the county understand and address health and safety risks around the farm they may not be aware of.
“Farmers must also take personal responsibility for their own safety and health and that of their families,” Dep Calleary added. “The low usage of the Farm Safety Code in particular indicates a very worrying lack of engagement with what is a practical preventative system. The code can help to identify dangers and how to assess and deal with them. The major causes of death on farms over the last 10 years have been machinery 49 per cent, livestock 15 per cent, drowning 14 per cent and falls 10 per cent. There are a lot of simple measures which can be put in place to prevent accidents in each of these categories.”
