Ó Cuiv grovels to intransigent farm groups

THE legal experts whom Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Eamon Ó Cuiv commissioned to enquire into the legal aspects of access to the countryside have certainly left the minister with egg on his face.

I imagine the last thing he wanted to hear was that legal rights of way not only have no constitutional implications, but they barely infringe the rights of landowners and should not result in compensation for them.

In coming to these conclusions, the experts have had the precedent of most of Europe to go on.

However, as usual, the minister has come out grovelling. Once again he says there is no need for a legal framework to facilitate access ... this in the face of the unwillingness of the main farming organisations, over three long and wearying years of cajoling, to concede an inch. Instead they have made ever more outrageous threats and demands.

Indeed the minister has encouraged such demands, for instance by his musing in the Dáil before the election that if you pay to play golf and to visit the zoo, why should you not pay to cross rough grazing land in the middle of nowhere? This preposterous idea is unheard of anywhere I have walked in five continents for more than 40 years.

The minister he has a responsibility to the general public and not just to the farmers of Galway West. Winning a Dáil seat by pandering to the greed of his constituents is not the be-all and end-all of public life. If he is not prepared to take on the farming organisations, he should make way for someone who will.

David Herman

Meadow Grove

Dublin 16