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.

HSA chief executive Martin O’Halloran admitted that resources in the organisation had been reduced in recent years, including a fall in the overall number of inspectors from 197 to 152, only some of whom are dedicated to farm inspections. He also said farming was now more intensive, with bigger machinery and animals that are “more flighty”.

HSA senior inspector Pat Griffin said Ireland was predominantly a livestock and grassland-based agricultural area, which resulted in “huge risks” to those working in the sector.

He said research by Teagasc showed dairy farming “sticks out” as a particularly risky sector, with 58% of fatal accidents taking place on dairy farms.

“That rings alarm bells in my mind, given that quotas will be done away with on the first of April and a lot of farmers going into expansionist mode in dairy farming,” he said. “We are facing quite a difficult situation in trying to help these farmers protect themselves.”

The committee also heard that data showed that parts of the country with the most intense farming were also the areas with the highest level of fatalities, while there would be an increased focus on the role of tractors and machinery in farm safety.

The HSA also said there was a reasonably high level of awareness of farm safety codes of practice, but shortcomings where farmers fail to rectify problems identified in inspections.

Mr O’Halloran said last year’s spike in farm deaths may be due to the 40% increased output in the sector in 2014, as well as higher silage yield which resulted in more bagged silage, and “a lack of help on farms”, citing 2009 as a year in which there were fewer deaths as many people made unemployed by the economic crash moved home to help out.

Last year, children and pensioners were disproportionately represented in the farm deaths figures. The HSA said it would enforce regulations on children under seven years being carried in tractor cabs, and had met this week with the Road Safety Authority over teenagers driving on roads carrying loads of silage.