As Farm Safety Week 2018 gets underway this week from today (Monday, July 16), the Irish Farmers’ Association has announced the appointment of a new health and safety officer.
William Shortall has been appointed as IFA Health and Safety executive to lead farm safety promotion and peer-to-peer mentoring.
Commenting on the new appointment as Farm Safety Week kicks off, IFA president Joe Healy said: “All too often farmers do not recognise the risks on their farms, which makes it difficult to manage the problem,” he said.
‘Fresh pair of eyes’
“Sometimes, all that is needed is a fresh pair of eyes to help identify risks and to enable change.
“The IFA is appointing a Farm Health and Safety Executive to implement a pilot farmer-to-farmer peer learning initiative at branch level, to advise farmers about potential risks and educate them to become safety ambassadors within their communities.
The farmers who get involved in the initiative will help to mentor each other by, for example, walking each other’s farms to identify potential risks and visualise how safety works in a real life situation.
“This kind of informal learning has been shown to be effective because the people involved have the potential to adapt the programme to meet their needs and develop their own approaches to improve safety on the farm.”
Incoming executive
Shortall has worked as a regional development officer with the IFA since 2007.
He holds a diploma in Agricultural Engineering and has recently completed a higher diploma in Safety, Health and Welfare at Work.
Shortall will formally take up the new role on September 1.