Our names are Jessie Langton, Shaunagh Dunne, Jennifer O’Neill, Meghan Devery and Emily Gowing. We are fifth-year agricultural science students in Scoil Chríost Rí, Portlaoise, Co Laois. We are very passionate about raising farm safety awareness due to personal experiences.

There are so many farm accidents every year involving young children. These accidents may have been prevented had there been more awareness about the risks on farms. We have come up with a solution that could help prevent scenarios like this from reoccurring. We plan to host a day to promote farm safety in our school. We will hold workshops showing videos on what could happen, highlighting how easy it is for accidents to occur on a farm. We will look at different scenarios to find out how people would react in such a situation.

We plan to invite a guest speaker from Embrace Farm to talk to each group. We will also try to come up with a good promotional song and video for farm safety, which kids would be interested in.

We trialled our concept on 11 May by holding a small workshop with our fifth year agricultural science class, who felt this was beneficial.

We plan to branch out to all the local primary schools in our area, as younger children are more at a risk to the dangers of a farm. The children will inform their parents by simply talking about it, which will spread further awareness. If this is successful, we plan to put posters in all of the local GAA clubhouses and have a yearly discussion on farm safety and what families in the community can do to make their farms safer for others. The GAA is able to reach out to a wide variety of people, not only in a sports context but in the community.

Liam was an all-Ireland champion ploughman. He represented Ireland in the National Ploughing Championships and coached others. Liam was a dairy farmer all his life, as well as being involved in tillage farming. One day, Liam was taking a rake apart. A piece of machinery fell on his head. He was rushed to hospital, spending three days on life support. He passed away soon after.

We feel that teaching farm safety practices to children from a very young age should be mandatory in all schools.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to farm safety is to stop and think, assess the job you’re going to undertake and take a minute to think about all the possible outcomes.