Funding for officers to manage rural walks

FUNDING is to be provided for the employment of 11 rural recreation officers in areas where there are clusters of suitable, accessible walks, Éamon Ó Cuív said yesterday.

The Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister said rural recreation officers would be employed through the relevant leader company in the areas and would be funded through the Rural Recreation and Rural Development Schemes subhead.

Mr Ó Cuív said the role of the officers would be to co-ordinate the management of trails and assist in the marketing and promotion of trails in the region. “The issue of walkways and access has always been sensitive and it is one, I believe, which can only be solved by dialogue and by the active participation and support of not just farmers and walkers, but also the wider rural community,” he said.

Jackie Cahill, president of Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA), which organised the seminar, said land was not only the tool of the farmers’ trade, but was also their home.

“We have been subject to media bombardment, criticism and insult by people who wish to get rights over our land.

“Strangely enough, the very elements that are most vocal in telling us what we have to do with our own land are those that couldn’t be bothered coming here today to tell us to our faces,” he said.

Mr Cahill said the ICMSA would not engage in any further discussions unless there is a change in the law which would guarantee that there is no dilution of ownership of land.

National farming organisations were urged by Labour TD Ruairí Quinn to move to resolve the deadlock over access to the countryside for recreational walkers. He said that faced with the decline in traditional agricultural activity and employment, rural Ireland needed alternative activity to consolidate its economy.

Mr Quinn said the Central Statistics Office (CSO) farm structure survey published this month showed that in 2005 a little over half (56.4%) of farmers described farm work as their sole occupation.

In a recent study it was estimated that 260,000 tourists engaged in hill walking in Ireland in 2004.

“Their total expenditure was in the region of €138 million. But these numbers are now declining because of the increased problems of access,” said Mr Quinn.

He said Labour was not proposing some sort of unlimited right of access.

“We respect the right of farming families to privacy in regard to their own homes and their right to farm free from the threat of nuisance or the danger of damage,” he said.

Mr Quinn said the draft bill he published earlier this year would have allowed only land above 500ft to be designated as ‘access land’ and only then if it was not in active use for any kind of agricultural purposes.