Farming – more dangerous than every other occupation in the country combined.

It’s impossible not to be aware of the endless stream of farm accidents – some fatal and many having a fundamental effect on the rest of a person’s life.

While the Department’s compliance inspections, the Bord Bia Quality Assurance Scheme checks and visits from my bull beef customers are fixed for a time that suits everybody, the health and safety inspectors simply come in, produce their official identification badge and ask to be taken around the place. I don’t have a problem with the approach. Some farm accidents are just that, accidents, that have awful consequences for the farmer, the family and often the farm itself. But some are foreseeable and I have always been convinced that an experienced second pair of eyes can see the potential dangers in a situation that we take for granted as we go about the routine daily chores.

I had never, to the best of my knowledge, had a full health and safety inspection before. The inspector arrived at the front door, unannounced, but we dropped everything and began a tour of inspection.

I apologised in advance that we did not have external agitation points in the slatted houses but they were built before they became compulsory and that was accepted. The redeeming feature was that the sheds were regarded as being very open with the chances of a buildup of toxic gas being reduced. I was surprised at the emphasis on how I feed molasses. Apparently, methods vary and awful accidents involving molasses and diet feeders have occurred.

We simply drive in with the bucket of the front end loader under the tap of our molasses tank and tip it into the feeder. In over 20 years, there has never been a problem. The other areas for scrutiny were PTO shafts – I think most people connected with farming realise how lethal an unguarded PTO shaft can be so these were also inspected as was my new all-concrete effluent tank. I had put this in while the Farmyard Improvement Scheme was in operation a few years ago. I had dithered between a fenced lagoon and an all-concrete roofed tank and had eventually, on safety grounds, opted for the tank.

After a look at the electrical work and a general inspection of the yard, the visit was, to my huge relief, over.

I was reminded that in the event of an accident that breaches of health and safety acts were criminal matters rather than civil ones as is the case with insurance misdemeanours.

At the end of the day, the written report instructed me to review and update my official risk assessment document and to record the maintenance and servicing work done on my farm machinery. I ended up being relieved that we were not pulled up on a major safety transgression but also glad that a pair of informed eyes had visited the farm and found no obvious danger spots that would have posed a major risk to ourselves or any visitors – especially children – but as ever, there is no room for complacency.