Why pay landowners for access every year?

THE Government is proposing to pay landowners €12m to €15m a year to allow access for walkers.

The 2,000km of paths proposed, 2.5 metres wide, make 500 hectares. At €10,000 to €20,000 per hectare, this land could be bought for €5m to €10m, leaving millions for surfacing, gates and fencing.

And the next year the State could use those millions to build another 2,000km of paths, and so on, every year.

Why pay out all this money every year simply for access to land when it could be spent providing footpaths that would be there forever?

The State has no problem acquiring land for road-building, using compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) for ‘designed’ works or simply taking land illegally for small ‘undesigned’ roadworks, so why can’t CPO’s be used to buy up land for paths?

This is nothing more than another scam dreamt up by the IFA to put taxpayers’ money into the pockets of landowners for doing nothing.

Is the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Eamon Ó Cuiv, unable to do simple arithmetic, or is the country being run solely for the benefit of powerful lobbying and commercial interests?

Michael Job

Rossnagreana

Glengarriff

Co Cork