HSA: Farmers need to change mindset on safety

Farmers will be asked to help each other to boost safety on their land, with the Health and Safety Authority admitting it is “clutching at straws” in its efforts to reduce serious accidents.

With 2014 the worst year for farm deaths in more than two decades, the HSA said it would be cutting the number of inspections and instead working on developing countrywide discussion groups with the hope of creating “a sustained change” in how farmers maintain high safety levels.

Pat Griffin, senior inspector within the HSA, said there would be 700 fewer farm inspections this year but that the resources would instead be diverted to more practical ways of enhancing safety on farms around the country.

“With the best will in the world we are never going to have enough inspectors to do one [inspection] per farmer per year. We need to change the mindset.”

Teasgasc’s national health and safety officer, John McNamara, and dairy expert George Ramsbottom will now meet with HSA inspectors at the end of the month to develop a pilot project involving the setting up of 50 knowledge transfer groups around the country in which small clusters of farmers will effectively monitor each other’s safety efforts.

Mr McNamara said there was already a network of 800 smaller groups around the country which met monthly to discuss a variety of issues. It is planned that one inspector will engage with as many as three groups.

The exact format has yet to be decided, but Mr Griffin said it could mean pairs or small groups of farmers, of similar age, visiting each other and advising as to ways to enhance safety.

Mr McNamara said that the challenge was to entice older farmers not already engaged with a group to attend and take part, in what he described as “an ongoing process”.

Other new measures involving changes in the inspection regime are likely to be announced later in the year, while inspectors are already working on tougher policing of safety standards involving unguarded PTO shafts, open slurry pits, and children under the age of seven being carried on tractors.

“We are grasping at straws,” said Mr Griffin.

“We have done a huge amount of work in the past four to five years and the reality is, I believe, very little of it is working.

“The best way to get people to change is on a farmer-to-farmer basis, coming up with solutions themselves.”