Focus: Keep Out

The plan has been almost three years in the making and followed input from a number of groups including the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Keep Ireland Open (KIO, an access lobby group), the Mountaineering Council of Ireland and Coillte, the forestry conglomerate.

It has yet to be made public, but the proposal is that farmers get involved in developing walking routes and some are paid to maintain them.

O’Cuiv has described it as a “marvellous breakthrough”, but it’s difficult to share his optimism. The IFA with 85,000 members, hasn’t signed up because “there is nothing in it” for them. It wants annual compensation in the order of €5 per metre of walking route, suggesting this will cost only €6m a year.

O’Cuiv and others believe that introducing a payment system could lead to an avalanche of claims from landowners not on designated routes, such as those in the highlands, and the cost could be €400m.

Two farmers’ groups have signed up, but only on the basis that compensation is discussed in detail. The Irish Cattle and Sheep Owners’ Association (ICSA) thinks farmers in scenic areas deserve the price of “a site of land or a bungalow” — between €50,000 and €100,000.

Some of those representing walkers support the document as a “way forward”, but others say it doesn’t go far enough. Keep Ireland Open wants legislation guaranteeing rights of way for ramblers. Only this, it says, would be a “permanent solution” to the problem.

The chasm between the two sides is significant, but somehow, O’Cuiv must bridge it. The passion has not gone out of the debate.

When the minister refused compensation for farmers, McSharry described him as a “little Cromwell”. The concern is that while the row rages, rural Ireland is rapidly losing its reputation as the “land of 1,000 welcomes”.

CON MORIARTY, a Kerry-based mountaineer and tour guide, spent three days trying to track down two elderly women from the Orkneys last month. They had been accosted and berated by an angry farmer after they had drifted off a section of the Dingle Way.

“These two ladies were outrageously abused and were totally shocked at what happened to them. I wanted to invite them back and guide them on the walk they were trying to do,” he said.

Moriarty says confrontations between ramblers and farmers happen every week throughout the country. “Visitors and Irish people who venture on to private land are being abused and, in some cases, attacked. I could bring you to 50 places in Kerry where there are ‘Fan amach’ (Keep Out) signs laminated and mounted on posts set in concrete,” he said.

The debate on accessing the countryside is being portrayed as a dispute between landowners and leisure users, but Moriarty says it is wider than that. “This is about everyone’s right to access Ireland’s heritage. It’s about people who have never walked up a mountain in their life, but perhaps have walked to monuments or picked blackberries down a bothairin and who now feel imprisoned,” he said.

Roger Garland, chairman of KIO, also knows of dozens of confrontations, some serious, involving farmers and ramblers and lists sites where there are now difficulties with access, many of them in scenic areas in the west of Ireland. The group’s website features a letter from a woman in Avoca who complains she and her children were told to leave a river bank near a village where she used to play when she was a child.

In another letter posted by KIO, a keen hiker from England expressed astonishment at discovering he had no rights to go rambling in the Irish countryside, while JBR from South Carolina in America complained his planned walking holiday in Ireland was ruined because routes described in guidebooks were closed off in parts. Given these stories, it may seem strange that Ireland is advertised as a good place to come to for walking trips. But who can blame tourist bodies for advertising the charms of Wicklow and Kerry? Failte Ireland says more than 280,000 overseas visitors participated in hill walking or hiking in Ireland in 2005. Such active people tend to stay in Ireland longer and are more likely to return. Not if they have an experience such as JBR’s, however.

Moriarty and Garland think Ireland’s attractiveness to visitors is at risk. What’s to be done? Both have their own ideas and neither are fully addressed by the Comhairle strategy. Moriarty wants access to the countryside to be guaranteed. “Throughout the world, modern nations have dealt with this issue in ways that have protected property rights while also governing for the good of society as a whole,” he said.

He doesn’t believe farmers should be paid and points out that French landowners supplement their income by selling products to walkers and establishing campsites.

“If you go down the payment route, where does it stop? If we pay a farmer for having the Kerry Way run through his land, do we pay his neighbour for the holy well on his patch or those in Beara whose cows scratch their bums on stone circles?” Garland thinks farmers are “doing well enough, thanks to EU grants” and wants legislation to guarantee rights for walkers. “Current law on access to the countryside is simple: landowners have the law completely on their side. They can turn recreational users away for any reason and the result is they are using this imbalance to keep people away or to demand money.”

There is only a passing reference to the possibility of legislation in the Comhairle na Tuaithe document, however. Garland says he doesn’t regard it as the final word. “It’s a good place to start,” he said. “It’s not perfect, but it indicates a way forward.”

Neilie O’Leary, of the IFA hill-farming committee that worked with Garland on Comhairle na Tuaithe, doesn’t agree with what it proposes. “The IFA couldn’t sign up to the Comhairle na Tuaithe document because, after two and a half years, there is something in it for everyone — except the farmer,” he said.

O’Leary defended the association’s demand for payments and says the future of the strategy is threatened if the demands are not met. “We are seeking a reasonable amount of money — about €6m. We want our members to benefit. People say farmers should embrace the opportunity by providing facilities such as camping, but if you have ever tried to get planning permissions for businesses in rural areas you would know how difficult it is,” he said.

O’Leary says farmers have told him they may block key walking routes in Ireland if they are not listened to. “We have eight members with land along the Sheep’s Head route in Cork. We have another 13 on the Beara Peninsula. If they refuse access — and some of them are considering it — then they would effectively close off these walks, despite the minister’s claims to the contrary.”

IT seems odd, then, that O’Cuiv would be upbeat about the likelihood of the five-year strategy’s success. He insists that “progress is being made” and is optimistic farmers will “come on board”. But is this likely when he doesn’t intend to introduce the type of compensation being sought by the IFA? “I know what they are looking for, but if I provide that for farmers with land on way-marked routes, then those with property in mountainous areas that people freely access now — but where there are no actual walking ways — could demand the same. Then I would be facing a bill of about €400m,” he said.

Instead, O’Cuiv wants to pay low-income farmers to carry out development and maintenance on walkways. “This is the best way to help farmers. Those that need support will get it and, in return, money paid out by the state will go to developing projects that will generate growth.

“Not all farmers will get the work involved, but they all stand to gain. If something provides a boost in a rural community, everyone benefits and landowners need to realise this,” he said.

As to the IFA’s threats to close routes, the minister says this may affect some areas but not all, and walkers should move to routes where they are welcome until the issue is resolved. The minister is open to further talks with the IFA, but how a compromise will be negotiated is unclear.

When McSharry was imprisoned in 2004, he gave an interview that summed up how farmers felt. It still applies. “There is no way farmers can give away land to strangers,” he said. “We must get our share. There is no free inch or no free land in the country.”