There is no law allowing hunts on private land

Media coverage of rural crime has emphasised criminal elements that terrorise rural communities within a vacuum of light-touch judicial application.

Overlooked is another stream of rural terrorism, which is legal in nature and arrogant by breeding.

Every hunting season brings the visit by the local hunt, on horseback or on foot, to rural areas, causing distress, damage and assaults by those who refuse to acknowledge that their activity is not welcome in the area and that access to private property is denied to them.

Contrary to popular belief, hunts do not have any special rights to cross lands, as and when they please. Hunts have no rights to enter or cross the vast majority of land and/or property in this country.

The fact that they can do so, under legal cover of recreational hunting, renders the statement that nobody is above the law in Ireland a pile of bovine droppings.

John Tierney

Association of Hunt Saboteurs

PO Box 4734

Dublin 1