Workplace deaths - Farm safety must always improve

EVERY year around this time, the Health and Safety Authority publishes Ireland’s annual toll of death in the workplace.

Behind the chilling statistics there are harrowing stories of human tragedies, lost lives and families ruined.

Year after year, editorials appear in these columns in the hope that farmers and other workers engaged in dangerous livelihoods might become more conscious of the hazards that surround their lives. And yet, possibly in a sense of psychological self-deception, the reaction is perhaps best summed up in the mantra that such an eventuality “could never happen to me”. However, in a moment of tiredness or over-familiarity with some aspect of the job, the unbearable accident happens.

As the latest figures show, there were 55 work-related fatalities in 2011. From every perspective, it is 55 deaths too many. That this tragic toll represents a 15% increase on the previous year, when there were 48 workplace deaths, is all the more disturbing. To make matters worse, it is the second year in a row that the total number of workplace fatalities has increased.

While the reaction of the public at large to such statistics is generally one of natural concern, it is tinged by an underlying sense of frustration over the repetitious nature of accidents that could and should be avoided in the workplace. With this in mind, the Health and Safety Authority has launched a hard-hitting advertisement campaign aimed at highlighting the dangers inherent in farming as well as in other occupations.

It contains a graphic illustration of what can happen when a person’s guard is lowered even for a second. Even though there were fewer fatal accidents on farms last year compared with 2010, which had 25 fatalities as against 22 in 2011, it is entirely appropriate that the primary aim of the awareness campaign should be to remind farmers of the ever-present need to improve the level of safety in their workplace.

In order to drive this message home with maximum force, the campaign features an advertisement depicting Norman Bradley, a farmer from Co Carlow, who had lost his left arm above the elbow during the beet campaign 12 years ago. To highlight the importance of safety, his picture bears the tagline, “I’m the lucky one”. If he saves even one life, it will indeed be a good day’s work.

The graphic advertisement is the first in a series of safety campaigns aimed at preventing fatal accidents and building a strong culture of health and safety in all workplaces. Judging by the statistics, dairy farming appears to be a particularly hazardous occupation. Out of the 55 fatalities recorded last year, 30 deaths occurred in the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary and Kerry, a region that has a large concentration of lucrative dairy enterprises.

The risk facing farmers is intensified because they are working with powerful machinery capable of killing a man or amputating an arm or leg in the blink of an eye. They risk being trampled or gored by aggressive livestock. They have to deal with oceans of slurry in which a person can drown. Or they can be electrocuted in the farmyard in a careless moment.

Farming is indeed a dangerous business and should always be approached as if lives were at stake.