Legal obligation to make farms safe

Some 40 per cent of all workplace fatalities in Ireland occur on farms and as many as one in four of those who die on farms are children, according to Mr Aidan McTiernan, a regional inspector with the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) who has national responsibility for farm safety.

While the number of farm fatalities declined by almost half in the mid-1990s, the last two years has seen fatalities rising significantly again. "Last year, 27 people were killed in farm accidents which included six children. And this year so far we have 12 people killed in farm accidents, of which five have been children. So nearly half the [fatal] accidents on farms this year involved children . . . and we have not even commenced the busy season on the farm when children are out and about," he says.

Mr McTiernan contends that it is "not good enough" for farmers who do not have children to say that neighbours' children or the children of visiting relatives should not have wandered on the farm. "There is a legal obligation on farmers to make their farm safe. The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 1989, applies to employers and the self-employed. And because 95 per cent of farms in Ireland are family farms, the law applies to them the very same way as it applies to employers," he says.

Farmers must provide a safe place of work not only for themselves and employees but for others who "might" be affected by farm activities such as children, he says.

Some 56 per cent of child fatalities on farms involve tractors, machinery or trailers from which children fall, are reversed over, get caught up in or are crushed.

And according to Mr McTiernan, "in most cases an adult is present" which should alert people to the "enormous responsibility devolving on to those who are supervising children to exercise caution and care. Children have got to be kept away [from machinery]", he says. During silage making, children would be far better off being kept inside or brought away for a day or kept in a secure playground where they couldn't climb out and wander around where tractors are working, he says.

There should be a "substantial childproof fence" around the slurry pits and fences that have deteriorated over the years should be replaced. Children should be kept away from livestock, not only from bulls but also from freshly-calved cows that may be protective of their young. And farmers should ensure that children cannot climb bales of hay. Ms Mary Slattery, chairwoman of the HSA's agricultural task force, says farms are particularly dangerous because they are "the home, the workplace and the playground". Moreover, there is a "culture in farming that children have access to all areas of the farm" which she sees as related to the hope that children will carry on the business of farming. "Every single farmer of today was brought up and as a child was out around the farm, was helping with animals, driving the tractor, at times when tractors weren't anything like as powerful as they are now."

But the power of the machinery and the pace of life on farms have changed. Another change even in the last two years is that so many farm women are now going out to work. Unless arrangements have been made for a babysitter, the father will feel obliged to look after the child while working, she says.

The biggest problem is how to discourage farmers from putting children on tractors at a young age. "They will argue strongly, and there is a certain merit in what they are saying, that they are safer on the tractor than off of it because they know where they are. I could live with that if there's one child. But when two or three children come along . . . this is where the major problem is. If you introduce a tractor to a child at say two years of age, every time that tractor will start up, the child will run out and expect to be brought on the tractor."

It hasn't been traditional for farmers to look around and take a critical look at their farmyard and their general set-up in terms of the safety of children. And when an accident occurs, people incorrectly attribute that accident, say, to a child climbing and being crushed when the gate fell on him. But the real cause of such accidents may be a failure on the part of the farmer to anticipate the danger and to put in place corrective action to avoid it.