The event addressed a number of key issues affecting contractors and it provided an opportunity for the officers of the newly formed association to give their members a summary of their stewardship to date.

Cork-based contractor, Timmy O’Brien from Churchtown, Mallow, who is FCI chairman, has put huge personal effort into the establishment of the association. He told the conference that as a result of a number of meetings with politicians, he was hopeful of some measures to help the plight of farm contractors.

At the conference, he addressed the issue of the black economy by saying that their proposal that only registered contractors be used by farmers should benefit from Dept of Agriculture funded schemes. He was confident that in future only farmers who present invoices with a VAT number or a PPS number would be able to use them to reclaim income tax relief.

On some of the other issues, he said that the Government was prepared to look at the issues of seasonal hedgecutting on the sides of public roads and that there was an acceptance that slurry spreading times need to be reviewed to allow farmers the opportunity to spread slurry during the closer period when the weather is suitable.

On the carbon tax issue, Timmy told the conference that the Department of Finance are looking at the FCI proposals to allow farm contractors to claim the 6.6 cent per litre carbon levy refund in the same way that farmers can claim it against taxable income. He said that he was delighted to hear from his farming friends that banks recently received emails requesting their staff to be more sympathetic to agricultural contractors after such a tough year.

Tom Ryan of Teagasc gave an overview of contracting opportunities against the background of the Government’s Food Harvest 2020 report.

He spoke of the opportunities for contractors in providing machinery services to dairy farmers who will be expanding. He predicted that there will be demands on expanded machinery contracting services in a range of areas.

He spoke about the new sprayer regulations under the sustainable use directive and the opportunities that these will provide for contractors in sprayer expertise following training.

He told the contractors that all spraying equipment will have to be tested and registered as fit for use by 2016 and tested once every five years from then and once every three years from 2020. Contractors can cope with these types of regulations as they will have scale of machine use, which they should be working toward, said Tom Ryan.

Ronan Kilgallon of the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) told the contractors that as employers they need to be aware of their responsibility towards their machinery-driving employees. He said that between tractor and machinery accidents and slurry accidents on farms, these are areas that contractors are heavily involved in.

“Always have a spare pto shaft cover on the machine, no one should have to work with an unguarded pto. When you are buying a guard, always get second one,” he advised. He also spoke about the consequences after an accident. He said that three of the recent accident scenes that he had to investigate were related to contracting businesses.

“There are huge personal costs when there are serious farm accidents as well as huge grieving within the family of the person involved,” he said.

“At the HSA we are only asking people to do what’s reasonable; we are not asking contractors to wrap things in cotton wool. It is reasonable to have a pto cover, to have lights, brakes and to have equipment in good condition and provide good personal protective equipment,” he told the contractors.

Ronan told the contractors that they need to discuss the opportunities for two shifts of drivers in order that accidents don’t take place due to over-tired operators.

Gary Ryan, chief executive of the Farm Tractor and Machinery Trade Association (FTMTA), discussed the issue of credit with the contractors. He emphasised that any business, farm machinery or contractor can be profitable but run out of cash. “While most customers do pay their local farm machinery dealer, timing is still a major issue,” he added. Late payments are costing dealers up to 20% of the value of the outstanding debt, he told the contractors. He encouraged contractors to adopt better credit systems for their own businesses.

Declan Fitzgerald of Rock Financial introduced Adrian Madden of Close Finance to the meeting. Adrian told the contractors that his company, based on the funding of the British Close Brothers Finance, was open for business with farm contractors.

Michael and David Sparrow of Sparrow Insurances, who sponsored the conference, provided an outline of the insurance services needed modern farm contractors.