Our names are Mikey Murphy and Padraig Hunt. We are fifth year agricultural science students in St Michael’s College, Listowel, Co Kerry.

Our idea stemmed from all the stories that we have heard of people being involved in farm accidents. These stories fuelled our ambition to create a map that would not only give visitors, farmers and employed workers a clear and accurate outline of the farm, but would also highlight danger zones, which could result in the death or serious injury to the unsuspecting person.

Our idea is to produce a map of a family farm that is colour-coded in specific areas to symbolise the risk that these areas hold. This aerial map will have a key with two colours – orange and red. Orange will represent an area that possesses a medium threat but is still capable of inflicting serious injury, while red will represent an area which possesses a serious danger which if approached carelessly can result in death.

Examples of orange areas include female animal pens and storage areas for round bales. Examples of red areas include machinery yards, manhole covers, bull pens and slurry storage tanks.

On our map, we have also included a list of chemicals used on the farm. This is to assist the emergency services so that if they arrive at the scene of a chemical accident they know what chemicals may be involved.

What really stood out to us about farm safety in Ireland is that it often takes an accident to happen in order for anything effective to be done to prevent a future accident.

While we understand that you cannot prepare against every possible farm accident, we strongly believe our idea will be successful in helping reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on farms annually.

If we had a bigger budget and more time to work on expanding our idea, we would like to digitalise the map as this would allow for easy changes to be made as the farms develops.

Name: Oliver McElligott Occupation: Farmer

On the morning of 17 January 2017, I decided to agitate an underground slurry tank. Once finished, I lifted the agitator out of the tank and pulled forward. While doing this, I received a phone call. I was distracted and totally forgot to return to close the tank cover.

Later that evening, I returned to the shed to check the cattle. I walked from the dwelling house, entered the shed and turned on the lights. I picked up a plastic bucket from the passage way to get feed from a grain silo bin, located just outside the shed. I walked out from the lit-up passage way, turning right to go to the silo bin. There is no external lighting. The opening to the tank is on this walkway and I walked straight into the opened underground tank.

There was almost 7ft of slurry in the tank. I am 6ft tall, so for a period of time I was submerged in the slurry.

It was a non-slit solid slab so I had nothing to grab on to. I searched for a corner and found shuttering pins. These allowed me to get my head above the slurry. Fortunately, the bucket that I was carrying had also fallen in. I managed to get this to the floor and use it to stand on, giving me a one foot base. My head was now just above the slurry.

My mobile phone is not a smart phone but an old button phone. Despite being submerged in slurry the phone still worked, but the screen was unclear. I was able to phone my wife, a neighbour and the emergency services. I was able to speak but could not hear as my ears were full of slurry.

Escape

Fortunately my wife responded and I got out using a ladder. I was in there for 33 minutes. It is my mission to highlight how important a phone that suits its environment really is and that it is much more important to be able to make that call, than using a phone for data entry on a farm. My father died in January 1998 in a farm-related accident. I am very conscious about safety ever since.