HSA fears spike in farm deaths over quota changes

The Health and Safety Authority fears another spike in farm deaths because of the scrapping of milk quotas.

The HSA told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that the dairy sector is the most dangerous in relation to the number of fatalities on farms, yet this danger was expected to grow because of intensification on existing dairy farms and the addition of new entrants encouraged by the lifting of quotas.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture heard that farmers are eight times more likely to be killed in the course of their work than a worker from any other employment sector, and that as many as 1,000 farmers are killed across Europe each year. Thirty were killed in Ireland last year.