THIS MORNING, A minute’s silence was held at the Ploughing Championships for a farmer who died at his Wexford farm.

Martin Kehoe Jr, aged in his early 30s, died yesterday on the opening day of the Ploughing Championships after being overcome by fumes on his farm in Foulksmills.

He was a previous ploughing titleholder – as was his father, who is believed to have been attending the Ploughing Championship at the time of his son’s death.

He’s the 16th person to lose their life on a farm this year.

Speaking to RTÉ News at One, the Health and Safety Authority’s spokesperson Pat Griffin said that the size of the machinery involved “really calls on farmers to look at what they’re doing very very carefully”.

“If they’re buying machinery I think it should include training from the supplier, so that they absolutely know all the controls and how to use it.

One of the things we’re trying to do is to get the farmer to do a ‘safe stop’ procedure where they actually reverse park the tractor or a big machine so when they go out in the morning they’re actually facing out to see where people could be coming – because your wife, your child could be coming out to tell you something and then the accidents happen.

“We send our sympathies to that family and every family that have had a fatality on a farm, because it brings it all back,” Griffin said.

“So we’re extending our sympathies to the family and the wider community today.

It’s critically important that farmers come to our stand, they look at what we’ve presented to them and try to take on the message and go back to their farms and make slight little improvements that might protect themselves and their families.

Read: Man dies after being overcome by fumes in industrial accident

Read: ‘I thought ‘Please let this little boy walk again”: Henry Shefflin speaks about son’s lawnmower accident

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