Negotiations are ongoing to facilitate a farm safety initiative in the upcoming budget, Minister of State Martin Heydon has said.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal, Minister Heydon - whose brief includes responsibility for farm safety - said discussions are taking place currently on what a farm safety incentive in the budget may look like.

“In this budget, I want to be able to do more to help farmers to invest in farm safety, to upgrade their facilities and make them safer.

“Particularly in the context of labour shortages we have on farms, where we have older farmers on their own doing jobs - sometimes that are two-people jobs.

“Investment in livestock handling and other things, adaptions to machinery and that, can make those tasks much safer. I want to encourage farmers in that move,” he said.

Poor culture on risk

Minister Heydon highlighted that many different measures are needed to change Irish agriculture’s relationship with risk.

“At the end of the day, there’s a multifaceted approach in terms of how we support a changing culture, because our culture in agriculture is poor in relation to risk.

“We have got to change that, we have got to identify that having near misses on farms shouldn’t be the norm, shouldn’t be acceptable; that we can actually take steps to reduce risks and minimise risk.

“What I’ll be looking to do is have a series of measures there across a number of different elements to support that and make our farmers safer,” he added.