Farmers have to cop-on and approach their work on-farm more professionally when it comes to farm safety, senior inspector at the Health and Safety Authority Pat Griffin has said.

“This thing of bringing children out with them doing any type of farm work has to be considered more carefully.

“On average, 20 adults are killed working on farms every year. To think that people consider bringing children out while working doesn’t make sense.

“I’m not saying they can’t be down the yard, but it needs to be done in a more controlled fashion when busy farm work has stopped,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“Children shouldn’t be in fields or yards when work is going on. When people want to mix work and children, these accidents will continue to happen. Bringing children into fields and yards has to stop, that’s the bottom line,” he said.

Training

Griffin said that farmers need more training, more advice and to connect with farm organisations.

“We’ve run out of new guidance that we can provide them with. It’s over to them, they have to follow it. You could nearly say that for every fatality, some rule has been broken.

“If we separate children from the work, the accidents will stop. Inspectors are continually finding that farmers haven’t listened. People have to live with this nightmare for the rest of their lives.”

Fatalities

The last week has seen three farm fatalities and a number of incidents.

A woman and her daughter were killed in a road collision in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, involving a quad bike and a tractor on Tuesday 12 May and a second girl was airlifted to hospital.

A young girl was killed following a farm incident in the Malin area of Inishowen on Wednesday 13 May.

Over the weekend, a man in his 30s was airflifted to hospital after the tractor he was operating overturned at Breaffy, Castlebar, Co Mayo, while in Cork, a man in his 20s was brought to Cork University Hospital on Tuesday, following an accident on a farm.