FARMERS WILL be prosecuted for failing to fill in their Farm Safety Code, which is mandatory under health and safety laws, Pat Griffin, senior inspector with the Health and Safety Authority (HSA), has said.
He told the National Seminar on Farm Safety and Health yesterday in Athy, Co Kildare, that a Teagasc survey had found almost two-thirds of farmers had not completed the safety forms that they were obliged to do by law.
“It is quite clear many farmers are showing little or no regard for the Farm Safety Code of Practice which has been sent to every farmer in the country. There is simply no excuse for such a low compliance rate,” he told the conference.
“We have not applied the same rigorous enforcement in the agricultural sector as in other sectors such as construction, yet deaths on farms account for 30 per cent of all workplace accidents despite being only 6 per cent of the workforce.”
He said there had to be an end to the “softly, softly” approach adopted towards the sector. Fines of up to €3,000 could be imposed by the District Court and prison sentences of up to six months if farmers were convicted of breaches of the health and safety regulations.
“The approach of the past 20 years has not worked and it is time to change now and enforce the regulations to prevent farm deaths, which were running at six so far this year. Last year there were 21 and the figure goes up and down all the time,” he said.
Asked why more prosecutions had not been brought for breaches in the past, Mr Griffin said in many cases families were involved and it was difficult to prosecute cases such as where a father may have been responsible for the death of a son.
The deputy leader of the Irish Farmers’ Association, Derek Deane, rejected a claim by Mr Griffin that his organisation had responded poorly to the ongoing problems with health and safety on farms and were not “beating the drum as loud as the HSA”.
“We are working very closely with Teagasc and the HSA to get the highest possible level of farm safety and I do not accept that two-thirds of farmers have not filled in the Farm Safety Code of Practice,” he said.
“I think it is probably true that many of them had not updated the form on an annual basis and are behind in their paperwork but most farmers are very conscious of the need to have high standards of safety on their farms,” he said.
Mr Deane rejected the “stick rather than the carrot approach” being adopted by the HSE as “particularly wrong”.
“If they are saying the stick approach is the right one, they are getting it wrong. Education is what is needed,” he said.
An international expert on farm safety, Risto Rautiainean, of the University of Iowa, said Ireland was well served by its legislation in relation to farm safety unlike the US, where farm deaths were very high because regulations did not apply to farms employing fewer than 11 people and the fatality rates were twice those here.
He said stress was considered to be a factor in 12 per cent of all farm accidents and there were fewer fatal injuries on large commercial farms because they tended to have more modern machinery.
Patricia Murray, a psychologist, said stress had also been confirmed as a contributory factor in 12 per cent of accidents in Ireland.