Farmer Mental Health and Farm Safety: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-12 ============================================================ Michael Healy-Rae (IND), Kerry I also welcome the visitors in the Gallery. I very sincerely thank Senator Paul Daly for initiating this debate today. I thank all the Senators for their very valuable, sensible and sound contributions. I also acknowledge that I am accompanied by Mr. John Canny, who is an inspector with the Department and is in charge of the farm safety division. A debate like this in the Seanad is very important because farm deaths are something that affect everybody. I took very great notice of people explaining situations they had to go through themselves. In keeping with that, and with the Leas-Chathaoirleach's permission, because it is my first time speaking publicly since Saturday either in the Seanad or the Dáil, I will talk about a very close friend of mine, a great man by the name of Mr. Pat Morris from Glenvickee in Glencar. He was out doing his day's work on Saturday at a farm building and an event happened, unfortunately. He was 63 years of age and a fine, strong, hard-working, respectable man from Glencar. I always said nobody bad, not a woman or a man, ever came out of Glencar. They were all good. Unfortunately, Pat Morris lost his life on Saturday morning. That is keeping with the theme of what we are talking about. I am sure every one of the visitors in the Gallery and everybody have been affected by issues that have happened. We hear about the deaths and there are also thousands and thousands of injuries. As Minister of State with responsibility for farm safety, I thank the Seanad, particularly Senator Daly, for their great work in addressing the critical issues of mental health and farm safety. I thank and acknowledge the contribution the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, has made already in her role of supporting mental health. Everybody across all political divides knows she is deeply committed to her job and her Ministry. She is now, has been in the past and will always be, because that is a special and important thing she is very good at. Farming accounts for almost half of all workplace fatalities this year. That is completely wrong. It should not be happening. Tragically, there have 17 confirmed farm fatalities this year, which is the highest number since 2020. I extend my sympathies to the families and communities impacted by these devastating losses. In addition, based on available information from national farm safety, there are approximately 4,500 non-fatal incidents each year on Irish farms, some of which result in life-changing injuries. One of these was described earlier with regard to the young girl who was working diligently on a family farm, picking stones with a family relative. Unfortunately, there was an incident with a tractor and she is now struggling and doing her best to recover here in Dublin. She will be here for a long time trying to get over her life-changing injuries. Farmers also experience a disproportionate burden of health problems related to cardiovascular diseases, cancer and mental health. I also acknowledge Embrace FARM for the great work it does. I will not say I had the pleasure, but I had the education of going to the remembrance mass in Leixlip earlier. It was a profound event. I had never been there before. I saw pictures of all the people who had lost their lives on farms. In particular, I saw the children. They were young children and teenagers. I was early for mass, and I was on my knees looking at their pictures. I was thinking of their lovely little faces and their whole lives in front of them. They lost their lives on our family farms. I was thinking of their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and of the impact and devastation their deaths will have had. That will go on for generations because such an event happened on a farm. As politicians, Senators, TDs and all elected people, there is a massive onus of responsibility for us to try to do everything we can to help with this important matter. International research establishes clear associations between the physical and mental health status of farmers and increased propensity for farm injuries. Poor health increases injury risks while injuries worsen both physical and mental health creating a concerning cyclical pattern. Research has revealed particularly high rates of burnout and sleep issues among Irish farmers. It is concerning that despite facing significant mental health stressors, the availability of mental health services and help seeking is not common among farmers. They are not inclined to put out their hand and say they need help and somebody to talk to. Studies have shown that a significant number of farmers are unaware of the signs of poor mental health and subsequently may not realise they need help. The whole area of farm safety, health and well-being and the linkages between them is highlighted in the programme for Government, which places a clear emphasis on farm safety and mental health. It is a priority for me and my colleagues, the Minister, Deputy Heydon, and the Ministers of State, Deputies Grealish and Dooley. I am delighted to have secured increased funding of €3 million for farm safety, health and well-being initiatives in budget 2026. There is good collaboration between the Department and other agencies, not only in relation to farm safety, but also in relation to farmer health and well-being. Earlier this year the Department collaborated with the Department of Health, the HSE and the Health and Safety Authority to ensure that our open call for projects for farm safety, health and well-being projects targeted the critical areas that impact on farmers and the wider farming community. Speaking about the open call, this year I allocated €1.68 million for 40 projects, over half of which include a focus on farmers' mental health and well-being. A key strength of many of these initiatives is their effort to engage with farmers who are hard to reach by providing resources and services in places where farmers meet, such as marts. I welcome the Department of Health's initiatives which provide free supports for men experiencing poor mental health. They complement initiatives funded by the Department such as On Feirm Ground 2, a programme that the Department co-funds with the Department of Health and the Health and Safety Authority. They also complement projects funded under our open call for farm safety, health and well-being projects such as health check projects delivered by the Irish Farmers Association, Croí and the Irish Heart Foundation. The Department continues to support investment in farm safety through the CAP strategic plan. The TAMS 3 farm safety capital investment scheme provides grant aid at a higher rate of 60% for a wide range of farm safety-related investments. All TAMS applicants are required to complete a half-day of farm safety training. Farmer health and safety training is also included in a range of Department schemes, such as the suckler carbon efficiency programme, the ACRES training scheme and the knowledge transfer programme. Safety is part of everything a farmer does. I want to ensure it is part of all schemes for farmers across the Department. The accelerated capital allowances scheme, which is expanded in budget 2025, covers a range of eligible farm safety equipment and adaptive equipment for farmers with disabilities. The additional farm safety measures and investments are eligible for TAMS and the accelerated capital allowances. Earlier this year, the Department partnered with the HSA to deliver targeted media campaigns focusing on livestock safety and farmer fatigue. In addition, the HSA's guidance on managing fatigue with farm work was included in the 2025 BISS packs distributed to over 125,000 farmers. The Department continues to fund research into farm safety, health and well-being so we gain a better understanding of the issues facing Irish farmers and ensure that initiatives are led by evidence and are effective on the ground. We heard from our discussions how critical farm safety and mental health is, the linkages between them and the impact that farm safety incidents and poor mental health can have on farm families. As the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, mentioned in her opening statement, the programme for Government prioritises farm safety, health and well-being with a specific focus on farmer mental health and well-being. Recognising the unique challenges faced by the sector I assure the House that I will continue to work closely with ministerial colleagues to prioritise improvements in farm safety, health and well-being through strengthened supports and initiatives where possible. I also highlight one basic thing that has happened over the past number of years. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan, and thank him for the excellent work he is doing in his Department. It has a lot of people out doing good work every day, who are critically aware because they are well trained and experienced in how to do jobs properly and safely. I know that farm safety and safety at work is an important issue for the Minister of State. I welcome his guests. I make the important point that a short number of years ago, working on building sites in Ireland was dangerous. There was a great likelihood that you would finish up seriously injured or injured in a small way. There was even a strong possibility of dying at work. That has all changed. Why is that? I make a confession about this as a person who worked in building sites for all of my years. Up to this day we are working on building sites. I do not deny that when it became strict we were not best pleased because, to be honest, we classified it as a nuisance to have beepers on dumpers and reversing cameras on diggers, to have to wear helmets and to ensure that you were wearing steel toe-caps at all times. There were safety at height protocols. I will not say we resisted it, but we were not embracing it. Why did we change? We changed because we had to. If we did not and we had a couple of misdemeanours because we were caught doing something we should not have been doing, it was no bother in the world; we were told that the gate was over there and we were quite welcome to leave and take our machinery with us. We were not long copping on because we were made to cop on. I have said before in open forums that we might have been critical at the time of a heap of people like the HSA. We are so grateful to them now, but we might have been cursing them at the time. They were doing an important job because they changed our mindsets and made us become more safety conscious. The Leas-Chathaoirleach will be interested to know that when men are now going to work in the morning, before they go into a building site or onto a road one of the most common things they do in the van early in the morning is take out the computer. They are all tuned into the computer, and they do safety checks, tick boxes and make sure their work plan is recorded for the day, regardless of whether their employer is a local authority, a large contractor, a subcontractor or whoever. They are logging in on that in the morning, and you can be sure that they would not go without their safety pins and reversing cameras and everything right. That is part of it. That is part of their day. The point I am making is that building sites, construction and working on the roads are safe places to be now because we were made to change. What we should be trying to do with farming is to make it in such a way that we could get this into our farmers' heads. It is not easy, because it takes cultural changes. It is like when you are using your chainsaw and you wear your chainsaw pants and chainsaw gloves and give yourself the best chance. If there is some job to be done up high and if you are like all of us and are getting a little bit older and your head is not as good for heights as it used to be, you should not be shy about saying you are going to get someone younger to do that. If there is a tree to be knocked in an awkward place, you might spend a few pounds and get the proper man to do that job because he is younger and livelier than you and he might have a better judgment of how to knock it. We have to try to make people see beyond the job. The job, of course, is important and doing the work on the farm is important but the most important thing of all is that you do not get hurt doing it, you do not hurt anyone else and you will get to go home that night and sleep in your own bed and not be in a coffin, a morgue or a hospital. It is as blunt and as hard as that. We have to get that message across because when you look beyond, say, the 17 fatalities this year so far – that is frightening; it is an awful number of people affected so horribly and adversely – and think about the 4,500 people who survived. That tells us farming and farm activities are not safe. We are not safety conscious enough and we have to really up our game. I take this opportunity to welcome a famous farmer to the Seanad, the great Deputy William Aird, who everyone in all the Houses of the Oireachtas is fond of. He is a man who knows an awful lot about farm safety because he has been farming all his life. We really have to try to keep the conversation going around farm safety. That is why I am so grateful to Senator Daly for organising this today. We all need to keep chipping away at it and keep the money going into it. It is not that it needs a fortune to be spent on it, but we have to spend enough so that we are able to back up groups like the IFA and others that will go out on the ground and do health and well-being checks at marts and all that sort of thing. We also need to have money there for the initiatives such as the TAMS and safety measures on farms and cattle handling facilities. If a person needs to put a bit of investment into their farm yard and if it will be of any help with them doing their job more safely, we should be able to fund that. The use of quads is of great concern. I met a man recently who told me the three most important things in his life were his wife, his quad and his dog. He said he would not manage without any of them. He was a lovely man and he was so serious and so nice about it. We were talking about an incident that had happened on a quad and he said those were his three things and that if he did not have one of them, he would not manage. However, the quads are dangerous. They are such an amazingly useful thing but predominantly, when you are away on a quad, you are far from home because you have probably gone up the side of a hill, you are on your own, you may or may not have telephone coverage and they are dangerous. If you saw a tractor tomorrow going along the road with no cab on it, you would stand and look at it because it would look very odd and it would stick in your head for the day that you had seen a tractor without a cab, but we take no notice of seeing quads with no attempt at all of a rollover bar. It amazes me. I met people at the ploughing championships who now have a method of installing a very imaginative type of roll-bar that comes out when the quad is starting to tilt. It is not out full all the time but it comes out if the quad starts to go over. We really have to start looking at measures like that. We should be encouraging initiatives like that. We should be encouraging it from the manufacturer stage first, but obviously an awful lot of quads are out there without these now. If we could encourage farmers through funding or whatever to have an implement like that on their quads, it could save a person from being trapped under it. A quad is a very heavy type of thing if it is up on top of you and if you are in a bad corner. The number of injuries is frightening. I have probably gone on too long. I apologise, but this issue is so important and I am so grateful to everyone for allowing the opportunity and for the two Ministers of State to come here today and have our say on it. If there is any way we can co-operate or work with the Senators in the future we will be very glad to do so. --- 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