Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 10 February 2022
185. Deputy Fergus O'Dowd asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the ways in which he and his Department are raising awareness of farm safety and communicating with farmers on this important issue. [6794/22]
View answerMy Department has a range of measures in place to raise awareness of farm safety. This includes actions to educate and raise awareness of farm safety but also capital support to make farms a safer working environment. Some of the measures are as follows:
Under the suite of seven TAMS measures, there is a wide range of farm safety related investments available to be grant-aided, with ‘Health and Safety’ guidelines included in all ‘Building Specifications' for the construction of agricultural buildings and structures. Additionally, it is a requirement for all applicants under the schemes to complete a half-day of farm safety training.
DAFM is supporting the AgriAware Farm Safe Schools initiative for 2022 which aims to Engage, Educate and Empower children to be farm safety ambassadors. My Ministerial colleague Martin Hayden launched the initiative on 6th January 2022. To date 400 schools have signed up to participate in 2022.
Farm Safety Training will also be rolled out to approximately 50,000 farmers as part of the Agri-Environmental and farm safety training package announced in budget 2021. The training of the advisors to undertake this role is being carried out this week.
In addition a Farm Safety Leaflet is included with the Basic Payment Scheme application packs, distributed annually to over 130,000 farmers.
Further, a mandatory Health and Safety element was included in all Knowledge Transfer Groups under the 2014-2020 Rural Development Programme. These groups directly engaged in the region of 20,000 farmers on farm safety.
In terms of media campaign's, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, in conjunction with the HSA, ran a combined television and radio campaign on farm safety in 2020 and again last year. The campaign focused on reminding farmers not to be complacent around machinery.
Further proposals for the dedicated farm safety budget of €2 million for 2022 are in the process of being finalised and will be announced in due course.
