Farmer Mental Health and Farm Safety: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-12 ============================================================ Paraic Brady (FG), Agricultural Panel The Minister of State is very welcome. Today I would like to raise a couple of issues regarding farm safety. I also welcome the extension to the new PTO shaft cover scheme of two weeks. The two weeks are very welcome. As everybody knows, a lot of farm accidents have occurred with uncovered shafts in the last number of years. Farmers have bought into it. I see the worth in extending that. I urge farmers out there to have a look at the shafts regarding PTO driven machinery. If it is in a state of disrepair, please use the scheme that is there to replace the covers on these shafts. Brian Rohan is from Mountrath, County Laois. He lost his father Liam in 2012. Liam suffered a serious blow to the head while working farm machinery. Brian and his wife Norma set up Embrace FARM, a support for farm families. It would be remiss of me not to mention it today in this House for the work that he and his family have done regarding farm safety and in helping to support people who have lost loved ones in farm accidents. What he has done for safety in the farm community is certainly worthwhile. He is dealing with bereavement, loss of life and loss of limbs. It is worthwhile to mention. His website is embracefarm.com and I would hope that people would use the service that is there. As we know, farm safety is one of the key areas for the workforce that works on farms every day, especially in the summertime when there is a rush and how accidents do happen and can happen. It is like everything else. We have road safety. We have seen the implications that came regarding speed in towns and villages and one thing or another. When it comes to farm safety, there are certain parts of farm safety. I commend Senator Paul Daly on bringing a Bill forward a number of years ago regarding farm safety. That Bill certainly needs to be looked at again and tweaked. If we can save one life, that is a life that does not wreck a family or home and keeps a farm together. When a life is lost on a farm, the farm tends to diminish in every way and tends not to function as a family farm. I certainly saw that at first hand a number of years ago. I happened to come upon an accident where we lost a dear friend back in 2016. I was the first on the scene. To this day, you do not recover from it - every day I get up out of bed I do not recover from it. Every time I visit the site, unfortunately, that memory will always be there. Thankfully it is something you get to live with with the family, but unfortunately we could have and maybe should have seen it coming and done something about it. Anything we can do, if it is only to save one child, that limb or whatever it is, I would welcome it. The Bill Senator Daly put forward a number of years ago and is working on needs to be looked at. I commend him on that. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-11-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:18+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-11-12