Legislation and Guidance
The main pieces of legislation governing occupational safety and health in the agriculture and forestry sectors are the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and the Safety Health and Welfare at Work (General Application Regulations) 2007
The core of this legislation is the risk assessment approach and the legal duty on employers (with more than three staff) to prepare a written health and safety document referred to as a Safety Statement.
However, since the introduction of the 2005 Safety Health & Welfare at Work Act, employers, with three or fewer employees, can fulfil this legal duty by complying with an approved, sector specific, Code of Practice.
The Health and Safety Authority in consultation with the Farm Safety Partnership established the first such Codes of Practice for the Agriculture sector in late 2006 and distributed it to over 160,000 farm households.
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Forestry
Guidance for Forestry was published by the H.S.A. in 2003 in the form of a Code of Practice.
A revised Code of Practice for Managing Safety and Health in Forestry Operations came into effect on 1st December 2009.This replaces the Code of Practice published in 2003.
ATV's
The use of all terrain vehicles (ATV’s) has lead to several very serious accidents, a growing number of which are fatal. The H.S.A. has updated its information sheet for the safe use of ATV’s in both agriculture and forestry
Child Safety
A revised Code of Practice on Preventing Accidents to Children and Young Persons in Agriculture came into effect on 6th September 2010.