With children off school for three weeks now due to Covid-19 – and public health measures remaining in place for a further three weeks – farmers are urged to prioritise farm safety.
Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) president Tim Cullinan called on everybody in the farming community to step up their farm safety plan in light of current circumstances.
In the last 10 years, there have been 21 fatalities involving children.
There have been four deaths on Irish farms this year already, the president highlighted.
Cullinan said it’s up to farmers to protect the most vulnerable on Irish farms, adding:
“Parents should talk to their children about the dangers around their farmyard. When a parent is safety conscious, this awareness will transfer to their children,” he said.
Children under seven are not allowed to travel in a tractor. Children should have a safe and secure place to play, where they cannot access the farmyard.
The president’s comments follow a previous safety warning issued by IFA last month, when Cullinan previously warned that a farm can “be a dangerous place where the unthinkable can happen in a matter of seconds”.
‘We have to be extra vigilant’
Concerns over the safety of children on farms have also been expressed by other farm organisations, with the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) saying that farmers need to be “extra vigilant”.
Denis Drennan, the chairperson of the association’s Farm and Rural Affairs Committee, said: “We appreciate that children are on farms now in a context and at a time where they wouldn’t normally be, and we all know how busy farms are at this time of year – coming into dairy peak production.
But that just has to make us extra vigilant about the presence of kids and young people on the farm and really cautious about the activities they are allowed carry out.
“Farm safety has to be paramount – we can rebuild everything else except injury or worse. It’s a lot to take on-board on top of the threat posed by the virus, but it’s already the reality and we have to force ourselves to take it as seriously as their safety requires,” Drennan stressed.