Obtaining data relating to farm accidents that almost occur, otherwise known as “near misses” or “close calls”, could be crucial to eliminating farm deaths and serious injuries, a psychology lecturer has said.

Speaking at the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) and Teagasc National Farm Safety Conference in Kilkenny last week, Dr Denis O’Hora from NUI Galway said if near miss data could be obtained, then Ireland would become a “world leader” in terms of tackling farm safety.

“We have to identify these near misses,” Dr O’Hora told the conference, adding that these non-fatal incidents can lead to change on farms.

He said that collating these figures would give a much more accurate representation of farmers’ behaviours and attitudes towards safety.

However, such data is not gathered at present and he urged this to change immediately, even if the data has to be collected anonymously from farmers.

The farm safety conference took place just a few hours after the latest farm death, the 20th on Irish farms in 2014. The accident occurred in county Clare.

The victim has been named as 38-year-old TJ McDonagh from near Liscannor in Clare. It is reported that he was inflating the tyre of a trailer in the farmyard when the tyre exploded, causing fatal head injuries. TJ, who worked as an agricultural contractor, ran a beef farm with his father.