Integration of farm safety into the overall management of farms, a compulsory insurance scheme and education and enforcement has led to a drop in farm deaths and accidents in Finland, a seminar on farm safety has heard.
Dr Juha Suutarinen from the Finnish department of agriculture told the National Seminar on Occupational Safety and Health in Agriculture yesterday that the annual level of farm deaths there averaged six in a population of 70,000 farms.
New programmes had led to farm accident levels dropping by 60 per cent over the past 20 years, which was attributed to not just the drop in the number of farms, but to the systems put in place.
Minister for Labour Affairs Billy Kelleher told the 250 people at the seminar in Laois of his concern at the serious state of safety in agriculture. Accidents had killed 18 people last year.
"Every farming family in Ireland has been touched by this problem. My family has been because I lost an uncle in a farm accident and I know the grief that causes," said Mr Kelleher, who was on his first official engagement.
"Already this year, six people have been killed in the sector, the youngest 59-years-old, the oldest was 81. Indeed, four of those six were older than 65. It is the last statistic that is most chilling.
"It is not just farmers who are dying but primarily their elderly fathers, uncles, neighbours and friends and we are not even mentioning the 3,000 people who are seriously injured each year."
Dr Anne Finnegan, in her presentation of the findings of her recent PhD on three risk groups on farms, said there was no such thing as a safe farm environment.
She said younger commercial farmers had to work extremely hard and under great pressure and this increased farm accident risks, yet a low-risk farm with an elderly operator generated its own risks from livestock handling.
As the number of accidents involving machinery continued to drop, the number of accidents involving livestock handling increased. She identified the provision of proper livestock handling facilities as a priority.
Irish Farmers' Association president Pádraig Walshe said he was concerned that the poor weather would contribute to increased accidents. "Work is piling up on farms because the weather has been so bad and when it improves, farmers will be working flat out to catch up with the time lost and this creates difficulties."
He asked farmers to work as safely as possible when the weather took up and asked them to be particularly vigilant in relation to children and elderly people at this time of year.
Pat Griffin, senior inspector in charge of farm safety and health policy at the Health and Safety Authority, said farmers must realise that the authorities did not want to criminalise them but to help them.
He urged them to concentrate on the vital farm safety issues, vehicle and machinery use and the numbers of elderly people dying on farms and to complete their risk-assessment document.
Seventy farmers from Laois were awarded Fetac certificates on farm safety and health.