Farm & Agricultural Fatality Statistics in Ireland
Quick answer. Agriculture is the most dangerous sector to work in in Ireland. The Health and Safety Authority recorded 23 farm deaths in 2025 (provisional), about 40 percent of all work-related deaths from a sector employing roughly 4 percent of the workforce. Older farmers are heavily over-represented, and vehicles, machinery and falls cause most farm deaths.
What this page covers. This page is a data reference on farm fatalities and injuries in Ireland: how many, the trend over time, the causes, and who is most at risk. If you want to know how a farm accident claim works, the time limits, the liability routes and how compensation is assessed, see our guide to farm and agricultural accident claims.
Contents
What are the latest farm fatality figures in Ireland?
In brief. In 2025, 23 people died in farm incidents in Ireland on a provisional basis, about 40 percent of all 58 work-related deaths, almost double the 12 recorded in 2024.
In 2025, 23 people died in farm-related incidents in Ireland, according to provisional figures published by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) on 5 January 2026 [1]. That figure is about 40 percent of all 58 work-related deaths recorded nationally that year, from a sector that employs only around 4 percent of the workforce. Farm deaths in 2025 almost doubled the 12 recorded in 2024, when Ireland reached its lowest ever work-related fatality rate [2].
The table below sets out farm fatalities over recent years alongside the national total. Provisional figures are marked. Earlier years are drawn from HSA annual reviews, and the 2025 figures remain provisional until confirmed in the HSA's annual review.
| Year | Farm / agriculture deaths | Total work-related deaths | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 23 | 58 | Provisional |
| 2024 | 12 | 36 | Record-low rate year |
| 2023 | 20 | 43 | Agriculture, forestry and fishing |
| 2022 | 12 | 27 | Lowest all-sector total on record at the time |
| 2021 | 10 | 38 | Sharp fall on 2020 |
| 2020 | 20 | 54 | Recent-period high for farming |
| 2019 | 20 | not stated | Recent-period high for farming |
Figures for 2016 to 2018 are held in the HSA's dedicated review, A Review of Work-Related Fatalities in Agriculture in Ireland 2011 to 2020, which records 208 agriculture fatalities across that decade [9]. For wider context, farming produced 191 deaths over 2013 to 2022 and 171 over 2015 to 2024. The worst recent year on record was 2014, with 30 farm deaths, about 55 percent of all work-related deaths in Ireland that year.
A note on the 2024 baseline: the HSA's official provisional figure for agriculture in 2024 was 12 farm deaths. Some later statements during 2025, including by the Minister of State with responsibility for farm safety, referred to about 24 farm fatalities for 2025 as provisional counts were updated through the year. We use the HSA's published figure of 23 for 2025 and 12 for 2024. Final numbers are confirmed in the HSA's annual review of workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities.
The longer-term picture matters as much as any single year. The HSA's own framing is that 2024 was a record low and that the 2025 rise, while sharp, should be read against a genuine long-term decline rather than treated as a reversal on its own. The national work-related fatality rate fell from 2.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2015 to a record low in 2024, before rising to 2.1 in 2025. The HSA put the 2025 rate at 2.1, up from 1.3 the year before, while stressing that the long-term trend remains downward. Across the decade, farming has consistently produced a large share of all workplace deaths.
Why is farming so dangerous in Ireland?
Farming combines hazards that few other workplaces face at once: heavy vehicles and machinery, large and unpredictable animals, work at height, and chemical and slurry risks, often handled by one person working alone in a remote location. Unlike a large construction or manufacturing employer, most Irish farms are family-run, with no dedicated health and safety officer and tight margins that can discourage investment in newer, safer equipment.
The disproportion is usually quoted two ways, and both are correct. The HSA points out that agriculture employs about 4 percent of the workforce on a standard employment basis. The Farm Safety Partnership, in launching the Farm Safety Action Plan 2025 to 2027, framed it slightly differently, noting that over the past decade farming accounted for roughly 38 percent of workplace fatalities while making up about 11 percent of the working population [3]. The 11 percent figure counts the wider farming population. That includes part-time and older holders who are not captured the same way in standard employment counts. Whichever denominator is used, agriculture's share of deaths is far above its share of workers.
What the disproportion means. A sector with 4 percent of workers should, all else equal, produce roughly 4 percent of work deaths. Agriculture produces around ten times that share. The gap is driven by the mix of kinetic hazards, lone working and an older operator profile described below.
What are the most common causes of farm deaths?
In brief. Vehicles and machinery cause around half of farm deaths over recent years, followed by falls from height and livestock. Livestock causes more injuries than deaths.
Vehicles and machinery are the leading killers on Irish farms. Across recent years, tractors and farm vehicles have consistently been involved in around half of all farm fatalities. Loaders, telehandlers and quad bikes add further deaths. Falls from height and livestock follow. According to the HSA's provisional 2025 data, the leading causes of all work-related deaths were being struck by a vehicle and being hit or crushed by a falling object, each accounting for 14 deaths, followed by falls from height at 9 deaths. Livestock caused 4 of the year's work-related deaths.
| Cause | Typical share of farm deaths | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicles and machinery | About half over recent decade | Tractors, loaders and telehandlers, quad bikes and ATVs, with power take-off (PTO) shaft entanglement and roll-overs on older tractors that lack roll-over protection |
| Falls from height | Significant and rising | 9 work-related falls-from-height deaths nationally in 2025, with roofs, lofts and unsecured pits common settings |
| Livestock | About one in five over recent decade | Cattle, cows protecting calves and bulls, a rising share of fatalities, though fewer deaths than vehicles |
| Other | Remainder | Slurry gas, drowning and falls on the same level |
Within the vehicle and machinery category, tractors are the dominant single vector, with loaders, telehandlers, quad bikes and all-terrain vehicles making up much of the rest. Analysis published by FBD Insurance of farm fatal accidents put tractors at the centre of the machinery toll, followed by loaders or telehandlers and then quad bikes or ATVs [8]. The power take-off (PTO) shaft and the absence of roll-over protection on older tractors recur in these cases. That single insurer analysis sits alongside the HSA's consistent finding that vehicles and machinery account for around half of farm deaths. Quad bikes and all-terrain vehicles are a distinct part of this toll. Over a recent decade the HSA recorded 10 farm deaths involving quads, of which two victims were under 18 and six were over 65 [3]. Ireland responded with a quad-use regulation, the first of its kind in the European Union, which requires a helmet and a recognised all-terrain vehicle training course. It is worth separating fatal from non-fatal causes, because the two profiles differ. Livestock is the single largest cause of farm injury claims in Ireland, but vehicles and machinery cause more farm deaths. A reader who assumes animals are the main killer on farms would be drawing the wrong conclusion from the injury data. The two charts below show the difference.
Who is most at risk on Irish farms?
In brief. Older farmers are the most over-represented group, with almost 80 percent of 2025 farm deaths involving people aged 60 or over. Self-employed and lone workers also carry raised risk.
Older farmers are by far the most over-represented group. In 2025, almost 80 percent of farm fatalities involved people aged 60 or over, according to figures cited by the Minister of State for farm safety. Across all sectors, by comparison, the HSA recorded that 19 of the 58 people who died, about a third, were aged 65 or over, with the oldest aged 88. Older workers are more heavily concentrated in farming than in the workforce as a whole. Over the decade from 2015 to 2024, 171 people died in farm accidents. Of those, 91 (53 percent) were aged 65 or older, and a further 34 (20 percent) were aged between 55 and 65. For comparison, around 38 percent of Irish farm holders are aged 65 or over, so the share of deaths among older farmers runs well ahead of their share of the farming population.
The reasons are practical rather than mysterious. Farming is a lifelong occupation with delayed succession, so people continue to operate heavy machinery and handle large animals well past typical retirement age, at exactly the point where reaction times and mobility decline but the power of a tractor or the unpredictability of an animal does not.
Two further groups stand out. Self-employed people accounted for 40 percent of all work-related deaths in Ireland in 2025. Most family farm owners are self-employed, working without the oversight structures of a larger organisation and often alone. When something goes wrong there may be no one present to raise the alarm. Children are a smaller but recurring category in farm-fatality data, reflecting the reality that on family farms the workplace and the home are the same place.
The lone-working factor. Self-employed and lone workers are over-represented in farm deaths not only because of the tasks involved but because help and rescue are slower to arrive. The HSA's repeated message is that planning work so help is available, particularly for high-risk tasks, is one of the most effective protections for people working alone.
Explore the risk factors. Select a factor to see what the data shows.
Farm injuries beyond fatalities
Fatalities are the most visible part of the picture, but they are the tip of a much larger iceberg of injury. Teagasc's National Farm Survey estimates that around 4,500 farm accidents happen in Ireland each year [6], with close to half of victims requiring hospitalisation. Set against that, the Injuries Resolution Board (IRB) received 709 farm accident claims across the entire six years from 2019 to 2024 [4]. With about 278,000 people recorded as working on farms in the CSO's Census of Agriculture [5], the IRB itself described the number of formal claims as relatively low, which points to substantial under-reporting and under-claiming.
The IRB's first dedicated farm report also confirmed that farm accidents are markedly more severe than other workplace accidents: nearly one in four farm claims involved serious injury, compared with around one in ten across other workplaces. Animal-related incidents made up almost one fifth of those claims, with cattle the most common, followed by horses, dogs and sheep. The report also recorded that back injuries were the most common injury type at 13 percent, followed by psychological injuries at 8 percent, then finger or thumb, ankle and wrist injuries.
The severity of farm injuries stands out in the data. According to the Injuries Resolution Board, nearly one in four farm accident claims involved a serious injury, compared with around one in ten for other workplaces. This greater severity is also visible in the compensation data: the Injuries Resolution Board recorded a median award of €34,802 for farm accidents in 2024, compared with €16,255 for other workplace injuries, and a total of €7.7 million was awarded across the six years to 2024.1 These figures describe the pattern of past awards and are not a prediction of any individual outcome, which depends entirely on the facts of each case. The gap between an estimated 4,500 accidents a year and 709 formal claims over six years is wide. It suggests many injured farm workers, family helpers and visitors never pursue a claim, often because they do not realise a valid claim may exist.
Teagasc safety advisors add a further layer to this picture through the near-miss ratio. For every recorded farm accident, they estimate there are roughly ten near misses, incidents where the hazard was present but contact was avoided by a fraction of timing or position. The recorded fatalities and the 4,500 estimated accidents are therefore the visible tip of a much larger volume of dangerous events on Irish farms.
How does farming compare to other sectors?
Agriculture leads every recent year's fatality data, but it does not sit alone. In provisional 2025 figures, construction recorded 10 work-related deaths (up from 5 in 2024) and manufacturing recorded 5 (up from zero). Within the broader agriculture, forestry and fishing grouping, the 2025 total was 26, made up of 23 agriculture deaths, 3 fishing deaths and no forestry deaths [7]. For the full national breakdown across all sectors, with year-on-year trends and causes, see our workplace accident and fatality statistics in Ireland page.
Farm deaths also cluster geographically with farming density. According to the HSA, in the provisional 2025 national figures Cork, Donegal and Dublin recorded the highest number of work-related deaths, at six each, and the IRB's farm claims data shows the highest claim volumes and awards in Tipperary, Meath and Cork, reflecting the concentration of farm holdings in those counties. What sets agriculture apart is not just the count but the persistence. Construction fatalities have fluctuated and fallen over the decade as site safety regimes matured. Agriculture's toll has stayed stubbornly high, which is why it remains the focus of dedicated HSA campaigns such as Farm Safety Week and the safety exhibit at the National Ploughing Championships.
If you or your family have been affected
This is a data page, but the figures above describe real losses. If a farm accident has caused a serious injury, or the death of a family member, understanding the data is often the first step toward deciding whether to pursue compensation for the injury under Irish law. A few points of orientation may help, and our dedicated pages cover each in full.
Employers and occupiers owe duties under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and the Occupiers' Liability Act 1995. A personal injury claim must generally be brought within two years less one day of the date of knowledge of the injury. Most workplace injury claims, unlike medical negligence claims, begin with an application to the Injuries Resolution Board (IRB), which assesses compensation using the Personal Injuries Guidelines. Compensation is paid by the relevant insurer, such as the farm's employer or public liability policy, not from a neighbour's or family member's personal assets.1
Two jurisdiction points matter for farming families who research this online, because Irish and UK rules are often confused. First, workplace incident reporting in the Republic of Ireland runs through the HSA, not the UK's RIDDOR system, which has no legal effect here. Second, fatal farm claims in Ireland are governed by Part IV of the Civil Liability Act 1961, not the UK's Fatal Accidents Act, so Irish law does not use a fixed UK-style bereavement award. Instead a statutory mental distress payment, the solatium, is capped and shared among dependants. These distinctions decide which rules and which deadlines apply to a claim in Ireland.
For the route, the duties owed and how a farm claim is assessed, see our guide to farm and agricultural accident claims in Ireland. Where an accident has been fatal, our fatal injury claims guide explains the dependants who can claim and how those claims work, and our page on fatal workplace accident claims covers the workplace route specifically. This page forms part of our wider coverage of personal injury claims in Ireland.
1. This is general information based on official HSA, IRB, Teagasc and CSO data, and is not legal advice. Compensation depends on the specific facts of each case, and figures and procedures change over time. For advice on your own situation, speak with a solicitor. Gary Matthews Solicitors are personal injury solicitors in Dublin, serving clients across Ireland, and you can call 01 9036408 to discuss a farm or fatal-accident matter.
Sources and methodology
The HSA is the only body that collects data on farm fatalities in Ireland, and it defines a farm fatal incident as an unintentional injury resulting in death that arises out of farm work, measured separately from the farmhouse or home. Non-fatal injury data comes from two further sources, the CSO Labour Force Survey and the Teagasc National Farm Survey, which is why fatality and non-fatal figures are not always directly comparable. All figures on this page are drawn from official Irish sources and dated at the point of use. Provisional figures are marked as such. This page is reviewed each January, after the HSA publishes its provisional figures for the previous year, and again when the HSA releases its final annual review. Where sources differ on a figure, such as the 2024 farm baseline, we follow the HSA's published number and note the difference.
- Health and Safety Authority, Sharp rise in work-related fatalities in 2025, press release, 5 January 2026. hsa.ie
- Health and Safety Authority, Work-related fatalities rate in Ireland reaches record low in 2024, press release, 8 January 2025. hsa.ie
- Health and Safety Authority and the Farm Safety Partnership, Farm Safety Action Plan 2025 to 2027. hsa.ie
- Injuries Resolution Board, Farm Accidents 2019 to 2024, September 2025. injuries.ie
- Central Statistics Office, Census of Agriculture (farm holder demographics and numbers working on farms). cso.ie
- Teagasc, National Farm Survey (farm accident estimates and near-miss research). teagasc.ie
- Fatal Workplace Injuries by Economic Sector 2025 (NACE Rev 2) dataset. data.gov.ie
References
- Health and Safety Authority, Sharp rise in work-related fatalities in 2025, 5 January 2026. hsa.ie (January 2026) [1]
- Health and Safety Authority, Work-related fatalities rate in Ireland reaches record low in 2024, 8 January 2025. hsa.ie (January 2025) [2]
- Health and Safety Authority and Farm Safety Partnership, Farm Safety Action Plan 2025 to 2027. hsa.ie (July 2025) [3]
- Injuries Resolution Board, Farm Accidents 2019 to 2024, September 2025. injuries.ie (September 2025) [4]
- Central Statistics Office, Census of Agriculture. cso.ie (Accessed June 2026) [5]
- Teagasc, National Farm Survey. teagasc.ie (Accessed June 2026) [6]
- Fatal Workplace Injuries by Economic Sector 2025 (NACE Rev 2). data.gov.ie (Accessed June 2026) [7]
- FBD Insurance, Farm fatal accidents analysis (machinery and vehicle breakdown). fbd.ie (Accessed June 2026) [8]
- Health and Safety Authority, A Review of Work-Related Fatalities in Agriculture in Ireland 2011 to 2020. hsa.ie (2021) [9]
Common questions
What counts as a farm fatality in Ireland?
The HSA defines a farm fatal incident as an unintentional injury that results in death and arises out of farm work, recorded separately from the farmhouse or home. The HSA is the only body that collects farm fatality data in Ireland.
How many farm deaths were there in Ireland in 2025?
The Health and Safety Authority recorded 23 farm-related deaths in 2025 on a provisional basis, about 40 percent of all 58 work-related deaths that year. The figure is provisional as of 2 January 2026 and may be revised in the HSA's annual review.
Why is farming Ireland's most dangerous sector?
Farming combines heavy vehicles and machinery, large animals, work at height and slurry hazards, usually with lone working and an older operator profile. Agriculture employs around 4 percent of the workforce but accounts for roughly 40 percent of work-related deaths, according to the HSA.
What are the most common causes of farm deaths?
Vehicles and machinery cause around half of farm deaths over recent years, followed by falls from height and livestock. In 2025, being struck by a vehicle and being crushed by a falling object were the joint leading causes of all work deaths nationally, according to the HSA.
Are older farmers more at risk?
Yes. Almost 80 percent of 2025 farm fatalities involved people aged 60 or over, and over the decade to 2024, 53 percent of farm deaths involved people aged 65 or older, well above their share of the farming population. Source: HSA.
How serious are farm injuries compared to other jobs?
Farm injuries are markedly more severe. Nearly one in four farm accident claims involved a serious injury, against about one in ten for other workplaces. The 2025 farm death figures are HSA provisional data and are confirmed later in the HSA annual review.
How many people have died in farm accidents over the last decade?
Over the decade from 2015 to 2024, 171 people died in farm accidents in Ireland. Of those, 53 percent were aged 65 or older, which is why older farmers are the central focus of farm safety campaigns. Source: HSA.
Is livestock the biggest cause of farm deaths?
No. Livestock is the largest single cause of farm injury claims, at almost one in five, but vehicles and machinery cause more farm deaths. Livestock accounted for 4 of the work-related deaths recorded in 2025. Sources: HSA and the Injuries Resolution Board.
How many non-fatal farm accidents happen each year?
Teagasc's National Farm Survey estimates around 4,500 farm accidents a year, with close to half needing hospitalisation. The Injuries Resolution Board received only 709 farm claims across six years, which points to significant under-reporting.
Do UK rules like RIDDOR apply to Irish farms?
No. Workplace incidents in the Republic of Ireland are reported to the HSA, not under the UK's RIDDOR. Fatal farm claims are governed by the Civil Liability Act 1961, not the UK Fatal Accidents Act, so different rules and deadlines apply.
Related guides: Farm accident claims · Workplace accident statistics · Fatal workplace accident claims · Fatal injury claims · Machinery accident claims · Employer duty of care
All 2025 figures on this page are Health and Safety Authority provisional data as of 2 January 2026 and may be revised in the HSA's annual review. Every figure is sourced and dated on this page, and this page is reviewed each January after the HSA releases new data.
Reviewed for legal accuracy by Gary Matthews, Solicitor (Law Society of Ireland practising-certificate no. S8178) · 3rd Floor, Ormond Building, 31 to 36 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin D07 · 01 9036408 · Published · Last reviewed
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