As a farmer myself, I have seen the impact of fatal farm incidents on families and communities. In my role as Minister of State with responsibility for farm safety, I will be considering all options and working closely with the HSA and stakeholders to reduce the unacceptable level of serious and fatal accidents on farms. With farm safety week coming up, now is the time for all of us farmers, and indeed, all those involved in agriculture, to make the necessary changes.

As farmers we must live safety – we cannot leave it to others. It is for each of us to continually highlight the need for all farmers to operate in a safe manner and also consider our own personal behaviour. All discussions on farming should start with safety – it must not be an after-thought.

Farm safety must be thought about every morning, before you go out into the yard. You should always plan your work. This means that you should stop and ask yourself: How am I going to do this job? Do I have everything I need and is it safe? It does not cost anything to do that and it only takes a few seconds. It does, however, require conscious reflection on farm safety every single day and before every single job is tackled.

There have been 14 fatal incidents on farms to date in 2020. This is 14 too many and results in families and communities dealing with bereavements that might have been avoided. Now is the time to say stop, and make the behavioural change required to bring an end to fatal farm incidents.

While farms are high-risk workplaces, farming does not have to be dangerous as better awareness and behavioural change can reduce the danger and prevent accidents.

I know that as a farming community we share the objective of reducing the number of preventable accidents on farms. As minister, I look forward to working closely with farmers and others in pursuit of this objective.

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Important farm safety advice from ESB Networks