It is harvest time. Farmers are working on the fields, gathering in the crops. Bright evenings allow them to work long, back-breaking hours. Children, free from school and wanting to help out, roam the family farm in search of adventure. Six children have been killed in farm accidents so far in 1999; how many more will die before the end of the year?
The death toll from farm accidents in the Republic this year stands at 18 - a number that has risen steadily during the summer months. Last year's total was 27 and on average there are 2,000 serious accidents on farms each year.
Reports of these accidents make disturbing reading. One can only imagine the nightmare of self-recrimination the victims' loved ones are now living: if only the child had not been allowed on the trailer; if only a protective guard had been put on a piece of machinery; if only a machine had been switched off before repairs were attempted . . .
Yet despite publicity about farm safety, it would seem that people continue to take risks, believing until it is too late that these things only happen to others.
"Nobody wants an accident, but very few people actually do something to prevent one. Farmers generally know the dangers, but the next step of taking measures to deal with them is where they fall down," says Tommy O'Sullivan, an inspector with the Health and Safety Authority.
Health and safety legislation applies to farms like all other workplaces, but generally it is only those farmers who employ non-family members who take serious heed of it, for fear of legal action in the case of an accident. Only 12 to 15 per cent of the farms in the State have full-time paid employees.
In the past five years there have been five prosecutions for breaches of health and safety legislation on farms, and these were generally after fatal or very serious accidents involving non-family members. O'Sullivan says that Health and Safety Authority staff inspect between 700 and 1,000 farms each year, which he accepts is "a drop in the ocean" when you consider that there are more than 120,000 farms in the State.
He says that one very dangerous misconception exists - that serious accidents only happen on particularly badly-managed farms. "We find that most of the farms we visit have considerable work to do to make them reasonably safe. The properties where accidents happen are generally a standard mix of farms. They are not `problem' farms," says O'Sullivan.
For people who do not come from a farming background, it is difficult to understand what children are doing anywhere near machinery. The chairwoman of the IFA's farm family committee, Betty Murphy, says that it is simply not a solution to say that children should be kept off farmyards.
"In most cases, this is their home, they live there and you can't separate the work space from the living space. And even if you tell children to stay indoors, they can slip out unknown to parents - a lot of accidents have happened that way."
Murphy says the IFA view is that people should be encouraged to take precautions to prevent accidents. Discussion and awareness of the issue are increasing, albeit slowly. "People need to constantly consider safety in everything they do, and that attitude is not there yet," she says.
The list of potential dangers on farms seems almost endless, and the peculiar circumstance of a family home generally being adjacent to such a hazardous workplace make accidents all the more likely, and tragic when they do occur.
In offering advice, O'Sullivan says the first thing that people with children should do is to sit down and decide on a definite policy - what children are to be allowed to do, where, and under what kind of supervision.
The most common accidents involving adults could be avoided, he says. Machinery should always be switched off before repairs are attempted. Many farmers have suffered horrific injuries, for example, when trying to free clogged-up balers with the motor still running.
FALLS have also become more common over the past five years. The roofs of many newer farm buildings are not as sturdy as people think when they go to carry out repairs. Slurry pits are another major hazard, and O'Sullivan says the fencing off of storage facilities and agitation points should also be a priority for farmers.
Questions are also being asked as to whether insurance companies should continue to cover children as young as 14 to drive tractors on farms, and Murphy says she believes it is not adequate any more for youngsters to learn from family members how to drive machinery. Some courses in tractor-driving for teenagers have been set up during which professional tuition is given.
Finally, O'Sullivan says it has to be remembered that the work of keeping a farm safe is never finished; there are always improvements to be made, facilities to be upgraded, fences to be repaired. "Safety has no finishing line, but a lot of people haven't even started on the road yet."