ICMSA president says there’s a ‘growing realisation’ more meaningful approach needed to farm safety

Commenting on the desperate trend that culminated in last week’s tragic accident in Kilkenny, ICMSA president, John Comer, said there was a growing realisation that a much more meaningful approach had to be adopted in terms of farm health and safety. He noted that it would be possible for Commissioner Hogan to utilise the CAP Rural Development Plan to address safety on Irish farms in a proactive way.

Mr Comer said that the take-up of the Farm Safety Scheme demonstrated conclusively that farmers were eager to engage and take advice on these matters.

But he repeated his conviction that there were underling realities that could not be skirted around if we were in earnest about tacking what he described as the “horrifying statistics”, chief amongst those was the fact that farms are increasingly single-person concerns where the farmer is “hammered” by time and workload schedules leading to the pressures and stress that diminish awareness of safety and best practice.

Mr Comer pointed out that every evaluation has pointed to these time and workload pressures as a contributory factor in the increase in farm accidents.

He said that he was absolutely convinced that moving safety onto any kind of regulatory framework or putting it within cross-compliance - as Commissioner Hogan was reported to be considering - was exactly the wrong thing to do.

“Adding another layer of inspection and regulation would actually increase the time and workload pressures that we all know are one of the reasons why safety isn’t given the prominence it must have. We need to be de-stressing at farm level and trying to convince farmers to take their time and farm safely. Putting safety on a regulatory footing is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done,” he said.

On the question of cutbacks in the number of farm inspections by the Health & Safety Authority, Mr Comer was unequivocal.

“We desperately need an active and on-the-ground HSA that’s introducing best practice in terms of health and safety and is bringing farmers with them through education programmes, seminars and every other form of information outreach and advice and , in that context ICMSA would be critical of any kind of cutback that diminished their ability to do that.

“But I repeat that has to be about ‘bringing the farmers with them’. We don’t need anyone or anybody adding to the already severe time and workload pressures under which what are now overwhelmingly single-person farm operations already,” he said.