Minister should put it up to the farm lobby

IT was entirely predictable that the IFA should come out with their usual hysteria in the wake of the legal experts’ report on access to the countryside. Cries of “nationalisation of the land”, “trampling on our livelihoods”, etc, rend the airwaves.

Nothing could be further from reality.

The expert group set up by Eamon Ó Cuiv to enquire into the legal position on access came out with a factual evaluation which merely asserted that the constitutional protection of the rights to private property are not absolute and can be altered in the public interest.

It also made practical suggestions to improve the non-existent legal rights for recreational land-users. The farming organisations, always grasping, short-sighted and totally lacking in imagination, have forgotten that the very people they insist on trying to banish from the countryside — the taxpayers of Ireland and Europe — are paying in excess of 80% of farmers’ incomes.

They ignore the common good. Each year many pedestrians would not die if they were able to walk the same kind of footpaths and rights of way to be found in every other European country. Ireland struggles with an obesity problem while healthy walking routes coveted by farmers fill with weeds.

Farmers are such grant junkies they cannot appreciate the possibility that they might gain real employment, both indirectly and directly, in what could be a thriving agri-tourism industry.

Mr Ó Cuiv, who has so far indulged the farming lobby to a disproportionate and unprofitable degree, now has an opportunity to show a little courage.

After negotiating with farmers for more than three years, and with nothing but insatiable demands to show for it, he should bring in legislation to allow reasonable legal rights to recreational users. There has been a superfluity of carrots; it is high time for a little stick.

Roger Garland

Chairman

Keep Ireland Open

Butterfield Drive

Dublin 16