Garda Siochana host Farm safety event in Gurteen College

AN Garda Siochana in the Clare Tipperary Division held a Farm Safety Awareness Day at Gurteen Agricultural College recently for the Agricultural students.

This event was of particular importance to the young students who will soon be going out on farms for work experience and will be working in all kinds of situations. In attending this event, the students learned how to cope with the many possible dangers that present every day on a farm.

Sgt Edel Burke Curtain, who organised the event, explained that Agrikids Founder Alma Jordan invited her and Gda Rebecca O'Sullivan from Balbriggan Garda Station onto an advisory Panel to help create a manual to Engage, Educate and Empower students on Farm Safety.

The manual is a child centric education tool for teachers, farmers, Gardai etc. when speaking to children on farm safety. “I believed that if An Garda Siochana had a tractor while giving these farm safety talks it would highlight the talk more as you could point out the dangers to them in reality,” said Sgt Burke Curtain.

Billy Shaw of WR Shaw Tullamore was approached and he didn’t hesitate and loaned a New Holland T6 to An Garda Siochana last November. The tractor will be returning to him in February, but only after it has visited schools in Clare, Tipperary, Offaly, Galway and it has also visited Mayo.

“The reaction from the public to the Garda Tractor has been so positive, the feedback from parents has been overwhelming, as they stated the children came home talking about Farm Safety and it made it a family discussion where some parents were able to reinforce rules around safety on their farm with the children understanding the topic far better,” she said.
“It’s so important,” said the former Rathcabbin woman who now resides in Clare, “for us to have this conversation with young people and to demonstrate what can happen when things go wrong on the farm or how a job half undertaken can cost the life of someone and so easily.”

While the agriculture sector saw a small decline in number of deaths in 2023, the Sergeant said “our aim as Gardai is to reduce the number to no fatalities at all”.
“Every death on the farm whether it be with machinery or with horses, cattle or whatever, is preventable,” she said. “Vigilance is so important, stop and think and by all means do your home work by advance planning around health and safety while you are out at work on the farm because this is crucial to lowering the number of deaths further and that goes for all walks of life,” she said.

Sgt Burke Curtain, with the help of Tom Duffy (Gurteen College), gave a very practical and useful demonstration on a “Straw Man’ PTO display which grasped the attention of the students who were amazed to hear that a PTO can kill an operator in just one second if they do not think and plan their actions around that work.

With the Gardai using the tractor on loan from W.R. Shaw as well as equipment supplied by the college, Garda Brendan Condon, a Forensic Collision Investigator, gave a valuable talk and demonstration on towing, concentrating in particular on heavy loads and on height, the correct way to load bales of straw, silage and tying down such loads. He also spoke on drawing cut silage, turning, reversing and also the licenses required to drive.

Students' feedback was that they enjoyed the practical side of the talks, listening about dangers of PTOs, Licenses allowed to tow, how to strap down a load, but were upset at the thought of an accident that could occur on their own family farm.

The Gardai also held an information stand alongside The Irish Red Cross and the following agencies had a speaker who spoke on their own specialist topic and then went on to hold a question and answer session after; The Health & Safety Authority, Agrikids, Embrace Farm and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association.

All in all, this was a very valuable and worthwhile exercise, which the Gardai are to be complimented on.