Every year thousands of tools, vehicles and farm machinery and equipment are stolen from farms throughout Ireland.
Since 2010, more than 28,642 farm-related crime incidents have been reported to Gardaí, including burglaries and vehicle, machinery and equipment theft, according to the latest CSO figures.
More than 2,000 farm yard thefts have been reported every year since 2010.
Crimestoppers (Tel: 1800 25 00 25), the Irish Farmers Association and Gardaí are reminding farmers to sign up to the TheftStop scheme which gives members a unique Security ID.
Members can then mark their machinery and equipment with this ID and upload an image of the item to the TheftStop site, making them more easily recognisable by the public and harder to sell on.
IFA President Joe Healy said: “Theft Stop is one of a number of initiatives that IFA is working on for farm families and people living in rural communities. In the last 10 months, it has been rolled out across 12 counties – Laois, Offaly, Kilkenny, Galway, Cavan, Monaghan, Cork, Cavan, Limerick, Meath, Sligo and Leitrim.”
Finbarr Garland, Customer Safety Liaison Officer with DoneDeal said: “More and more farmers are using DoneDeal to buy and sell tractors and farm machinery – over 830,442 farming related ads were placed on our site in the last five years. In the last 12 months, 18,121 tractors were advertised and 31,422 items of farm machinery.”
“While only a tiny amount of these ads (0.76%) are reported as suspicious, we regularly remind those using our site of tips on how to stay safe online.”
They include:
