Sack those involved in machinery pranks

FARM or contractors’ employees who engage in – and record pranks with farm machinery on social media – should be sacked, according to IFA President, Tim Cullinan.

He said that with eight farm fatalities already this year, anyone engaging in such pranks ‘should have a hard look at themselves’ as too often people weren’t willing to act responsibly and identify risks.

“This practice [machinery pranks on social media] is grossly irresponsible and is an accident waiting to happen. I am disgusted that people could be so casual and have no regard for the dangers involved in what they are doing.

“All farmers and contractors need to make it clear to their employees that engaging in these practices is a sackable offence,” said Tim Cullinan. Most of the machinery pranks appear on the TikTok social media site.

Last month, Director of Embrace Farm, Eyrecourt’s Peter Gohery – who himself lost a leg in a PTO farm accident – expressed his anguish and horror at some of the things appearing on social media involving so-called farm stunts.

In one of them, a young lad featured playing an accordion inside a diet feeder that was attached to a tractor; another showed a woman being lifted in the front loader bucket of a tractor; while a third one showed someone filming themselves as they were being attacked by an aggressive cow.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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