Sir, – The issue of rights for walkers is back in focus, with landowners and ramblers arguing the toss over whose rights should be uppermost.
People walking dogs through fields or trekking across country to appreciate the scenery or to keep fit are deemed to pose a threat to landowners.
Why is it that the worst trespassers of all in rural Ireland are so often overlooked in this controversy?
I refer to the foxhunts that operate in the countryside in the winter months.
If somebody enjoying aerobic exercise or taking Fido for a walk can do harm, then how much more menacing to the rights of landowners is the prospect of horses and hounds encroaching on their property, in the process knocking down fences and stone walls, scattering livestock in all directions, and ripping up whole fields of crops?
It says something about the power of the hunting lobby (which includes prominent legal eagles, bankers, property developers and super-wealthy socialites) that the mayhem wrought by these relics of a bygone age – foxhunts – is airbrushed out of the whole access to the countryside debate. – Yours, etc,
JOHN FITZGERALD,
Lower Coyne Street,
Callan,
Co Kilkenny.