Payment penalties for farm safety breaches

Direct payment penalties for breaching farm safety rules may apply when prosecutions have been taken against farmers as a result of a farm fatality, but they will be unlikely to apply for issues like broken PTO covers, the Department of Agriculture has said.

Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) rules were changed this year to allow the Department to penalise farmers who were found to be non-compliant with workplace laws or farm safety requirements.

The Department would not complete any additional checks to assess farmers’ compliance in these areas, rather issues can now be flagged with the Department if found during Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) or Health and Safety Authority (HSA) inspections.

Department official Michael Maloney told private advisers last week that the threshold for these agencies cross-reporting non-compliances will generally be HSA or WRC court proceedings against farmers after a farm fatality or a serious injury.

“We will not be getting cross reports of Johnny or Brian or Paddy that has a defective PTO shaft.

“These will be the worst of the worst that will be subject to prosecutions,” he said.

Poor attitude

Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon told the meeting that he had taken a “carrot rather than a stick approach” to improving farm safety when he held ministerial responsibility on the issue in the last Government.

“Acknowledging though as a starting point the reason we are the most dangerous workplace in all of Ireland, the reason an Irish farmer is seven times more likely to die in a workplace incident than any other of the over 2m workers in this country it’s because by and large, we have a poor attitude to risk.

“That attitude of ‘oh that was a near miss, that’s par for the course’. It’s not par for the course,” he said.