Danny Healy-Rae urges action on tractor safety and media

Cahillic, we're all led to be here today, and this is a very serious matter. As you've been aware, maybe, we've had more than no share of farm accidents and other machinery accidents and so many things, even in the recent past and going back 40 years it's been happening around me. A local man lost his arm in a drive shaft, and he's worked all his life and fine, but he was lucky enough, and another neighbour was mangled by the same thing. And then, I suppose, even myself, I've had accidents and close calls. I've been involved in things for machinery and animals for over 40 years, and I suppose I believe this excavate here today is crucial in highlighting the dangers. And one of the things that I will say is, that I'm very agitated about, is handbrakes. Having the handbrake work in the tractor or the vehicle, ensuring that it's working, and ensuring even if it is there to make sure that you pull it and pull it right. I finished up with the tractor going over my two legs, the front wheel of a four-wheel-drive tractor, and resting up in my hip. And the first night of COVID, I was in CUH. Luckily, I had nothing broke, and I appeared here as normal, but I was fairly sore, and I was lucky. So that's one thing. The power drives is the other thing. And to ensure that you don't have loose claws or be in a hurry around the unit, and to shut it off when you come off the seat of the tractor, shut it off. Whatever, whoever had it. Quick question, and we'll move on to Centre Daily. All right, and the last thing is children. It's easy enough to mine one child, but I'd advise all farmers and operators to be very choosy about bringing a second child with them, and I just say to you, have you recognised these issues, and to maybe highlight them further, because I believe that those three things will stop lives of being taken. One comment on everything that was said. All great ideas, all great examples of what happens on our farms today. However, in your vein there, Deputti Aire, to call out things that are happening. Well, from our point of view, in this sector, trying to help save farmers' lives and keep them going is the disjointedness of funding, of regulation, of legislation. Whose responsibility is it? What department is it in? What minister has responsibility for it? That's our biggest frustration in this sector. So, and just to call that out in the sense of who is going to take it on and value the farmer's life and their family. Who is going to stand up and do that in the government? Just, I think, a common word that I've heard just in the last half hour is luck, and that is not a word I think we should be using in relation to farm safety, because we're talking about, yes, it's an agricultural concern, but it is a rural development issue. This is about sustainability. This is about community well-being. And we've heard already, just in this half hour of the devastation, that preventable accidents causes in communities. There are psychological devastation, financial devastation, emotional devastation. So I would join with that call and echo what Norma is saying is we do need that ring-fenced solid structures to be able to continue the work that we're doing. Go ahead. Ms. Charmant. I just want to comment a little bit around the area, around media. We talk a lot about changing the culture. We talk a lot about changing the behaviour. What we need to do is to denormalise our attitudes towards risk. And I see the media, the mainstream media, as being key, and then social media key in all of this. All too often I am seeing postings of children as young as 9 and 10 years old, sometimes 3 and 4, left unaccompanied, driving high-end agricultural machinery as if it's some badge of honour. This social media vanity over sanity really needs to be called out. And I would also call on people within the media that when they're sharing pictures and videos and images, that they are complying with the safety rules, that they're not undermining the work of us advocates who are working so hard to really denormalise these attitudes towards risks. Not only is it extremely frustrating and upsetting, but what you're also doing is that you are triggering people who haven't been so lucky, who haven't gotten away with it. And they're looking at this taking place, and it's some slap in the face for these poor people to see this. So if you can't do it for the advocates that are working in it, think of the farm families who have been left behind that are dealing with this particular loss. Denormalising the risk is absolutely vital. I did create a media charter around this, which I'm still due to a launch. It's the Farm Safety Media Charter. And it's really a set of guidelines that the media can follow when they're putting, we say, images and visuals on an agricultural basis out there. Really would love to launch it. It's been used for 20 years in the United States. I'm on the Child Ag Safety Network leadership team in the United States. They've just started doing it in Australia. We had the idea too, and we're still waiting to actually launch it. And that's an absolute pity, I have to say. I think it could go a long way to this changing of the culture and behaviour. And I just want to follow up once again on what Norma was saying. Access to funding is absolutely crucial. I hear year on year, the work I do is great, and it's where it all needs to start. Our children are highly influential in this topic. I've had children as young as four years old participate in my events, explaining to their fathers why standing in the area of agitation is dangerous. What safety sign needs to go up and where? And no daddy, I'm not allowed on that tractor, I'm only four. They are extremely influential. Pester power is absolutely key. I worked for quite a while within the Green Schools programme, and I saw exactly how influential kids could be. Social change can happen with them. It's normal. It normalises with them. And when it's normal with them, then it's in there forever. We're looking at a socially sustainable, safer future on our farms, just by engaging our children. The resources that I've created are simple. They're fun. We even have a manual, where I work alongside and guard a Shiokana in their own community outreach programmes, where we're helping them to deliver farm safety events in their own locality. Tapping into what's already out there is absolutely key. There's a lot of us working in this space, bringing us all together so that we can all work together in a much more fluid and proactive manner is not only cost effective, but it will start to help us to see results. And I'll allude back to this. I was here in May 2015, very new into this particular game, and I was included in a Shannon report on farm safety. A lot of us are still in this room today and we're still having this conversation. We need to move this on. We all, we have the ideas, we have the resources, help us to fund what we do. So the objectives and the work that we do that benefits so many can actually continue without any blockades, without any barriers. Thank you. FBD. Just to respond, I suppose, to a couple of the questions that were directly put there. So Senator Daly had a question with regard to the introduction of mandatory training and younger drivers on tractors. For a number of years now, and Ciarán can probably give a little bit more detail on it because he's a lot closer to it, we've been supporting the cost of FRS, provide tractor training, actually, to young persons operating tractors. In terms of the broader context, I suppose, around, you know, we do have to operate and, I suppose, provide insurance in line with licensing laws and the Road Traffic Act. But were there to be any changes on that, obviously, we would have to look at that as part of our insurance offering. In terms of Senator Brady's comments around using marts for safety events, I think we would completely agree on that and that's been one of the areas, I think, particularly for older farmers where we found it useful to reach them in terms of promoting farm safety issues and would agree that perhaps there are things that could be done there. Do we do risk assessments on farms? We have a dedicated risk management team within FVD who are concerned with farm safety. Ciaran leads that team and our 34-strong branch network are out meeting farmers on a day-to-day basis and consulting with them on risk needs. In terms of Minister Kenny's feedback around training for young people, so we've mentioned already around FRS, but I might let Ciaran come in in a moment as well about other initiatives that are there. And Deputy Erd, finally, on your piece on the issues that are causing accidents, I suppose our own claims experience is very much in line with published statistics and we'd see the most common and serious accidents would involve farm machinery, farm vehicles, falls, livestock and slurry. Okay, thank you. Ciaran might just add a couple of... Yeah, just to add to that, when we look at fatalities within the sector, over the last 10 years, there's been 171 fatalities and 40% of those have been in relation to vehicles, so it's a big focus for us. We work very closely with the Farm Safety Partnership and we believe collaboration is really important and we do that with all the initiatives that we happen to be involved with. Behaviour change, I suppose, is key to make a real difference in this area. And when we put our national plan in place every year, we're looking at, number one, we go to all the agricultural colleges and we bring a campaign that's called Champions for Safety, asking those students to be champions for safety going forward. We have a national mark for Farm Safety and Remembrance Week, which is to remember all those people who've lost their lives, but also to make people aware of the key risks. But it's an opportunity to focus on the older farmers because we know that's an area that they go to. And signage, so we've produced Farm Safety signage and the first key message we have in that signage is the farm is not a playground because we know there's too many children fatally injured on Irish farms. To date, we've produced over 100,000 of those farms and they're disseminated by our local offices. And again, with our media campaigns or any competitions we're involved in, we integrate safety into everything we do with all our safety guidance. Thank you.