The 2018 National Farm Safety and Health Conference will be held at the Dolmen Hotel in Carlow on Friday, October 26.
The conference – which will take place between 9:00am and 1:10pm – is aimed at anyone with an interest in improving the safety, health and welfare of farmers and farm families.
The conference is being hosted by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) in association with Teagasc and the Farm Safety Partnership. The event is sponsored by FBD Trust.
The Minister of State for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market and Data Protection, Pat Breen, is scheduled to give the opening address.
Following that, the first session will be chaired by the president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Joe Healy. He will be joined by director of Teagasc Prof. Gerry Boyle, who will speak on future trends in Irish agriculture and associated farm safety challenges.
As well as this, Swedish expert on work science Prof. Peter Lundqvist will outline strategies to improve farm safety across the EU and the work of the EU farm safety co-operation network.
The IFA’s national safety executive, William Shortall, is also set to speak about plans to engage farmers with safety.
In this session, the head of agri-business and rural development at University College Dublin (UCD), Prof. Jim Kinsella will describe the findings of research into health and safety in dairy discussion groups.
Arthur Byrne from ESB Networks will speak about electrical dangers in farming and the 2018 FBD Young Farmer of the Year, Daniel Hawthorne, will give his views on the essentials of good farming.
The final session will be a panel discussion chaired by the CEO of Macra Na Feirme, Denis Duggan, and it will focus on strategies to influence farmers to take practical action to improve safety at farm level.
A link to the event programme can be found here. Anyone interested in booking a place at the conference is asked to contact Teagasc Oak Park on: 059-9170200.