Four people, including one child, have died already this year on farms, it was learned yesterday at the launch of Farm Safety Week.
In the last decade, 200 people, including 43 children, have died on farms. Farms account for more than 30 per cent of workplace deaths despite the fact fewer than 8 per cent of the national workforce is employed on the land.
A five-year Farm Safety Action Plan has been launched by the Health and Safety Authority which is aimed at reducing the farm death toll.
The chairman of the safety group, Mr Frank Laffey, said the plan had a number of specific targets, the first being a 50 per cent reduction in farm fatalities in the five years from 2001.
The plan would seek zero child fatalities on farms; for the past decade they have been averaging four each year. The plan also envisaged cutting farm accidents to fewer than 1,600 a year. The latest figures available showed a total of 60 farm-related accidents each week. Mr Laffey said there would be increased inspection of farms and the aim was to carry out 1,000 inspections annually.
The campaign would involve applying engineering solutions for safety issues such as ensuring all power drive shafts were covered and new building were designed for safety.
The chairman of the Health and Safety Authority, Mr Frank Cunneen, said the number of farm deaths and accidents was a source of great concern to the authority.
The involvement of the farm organisations, contractors and Teagasc and other bodies, was making a major contribution to reducing farm deaths.
The Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Noel Treacy, said the Department would be playing a key role in helping to reduce deaths and accidents.
Modules on health and safety were now mandatory for all new Rural Environment Protection Scheme applicants and the highest safety standards would be incorporated in new and revised specifications for farm buildings and structures.
The Farm Safety Plan showed that over the past 10 years there was an average of 20 deaths on farms every yea and that a quarter of these were children. While the death toll fell last year to 13, including two children, it was at its highest peak in 1995 when there were 28 deaths, including seven children.
A breakdown of the fatalities showed that three out of every four farm fatalities last year were caused by farm machinery.
While machinery accounted for 35 per cent of all farm accidents in the mid 1990s, its contribution to total farm accidents in 2001 declined to 20 per cent.
Livestock now was responsible as the dominant cause of farm accidents accounting for 35 per cent of the total accidents on farms, 3,100, in 2001.
Teagasc studies also found that there was a large range of farm-related illnesses resulting from farm activity. It found such illnesses on 9.9 per cent of farms surveyed and the most important one was chronic back injury, respiratory/lung problems and 8 per cent reported diseases from animals.
The report also found that most farms were now operated as one-person units which had serious implications for health and safety as the farmer had to carry out many activities, which usually would require two people, alone.
The ageing profile of farmers - only 13 per cent are under 35 years old - also made them more vulnerable to accidents.