Tour operators are looking anxiously at the farming sector as there is a growing number of problems with access to land, Seán MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, reports.
The shooting of a beagle by an angry farmer in Kilkenny last month received wide publicity here. But it was also widely reported in country sports magazines across the UK and on the Continent. While this was a specific, extreme problem involving a continuing difficulty over access to lands by the local hunt, it mirrored a growing problem in many places across the country where traditional recreational rights and land ownership are colliding.
The most recent survey of tourists coming to Ireland has found that 60 per cent listed walking as one of the main reasons they came here. There has been a major growth in the number of tourists coming into the country to get involved in adventure and outdoor walking, hill-walking and hiking tours.
On the other hand there is a growing number of farmers disillusioned by their work and the returns they are getting from their land from all the commodity areas. Former president of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA), Joe Rea, has admitted that in 50 years farming he has never seen such low morale in the farming community.
Against that background it was very unfortunate that additional income, which had been coming to farmers in the most beautiful places in the country, was cut off by order of the EU.
More than 300 farmers, mainly around the coast, had been receiving access payments as part of the first Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS).
Allowing access through their lands delivered an extra 10 per cent on the £50 per acre payments they were receiving at the time. This was very welcome income for some of the most disadvantaged farmers in the country.
Spurred on by rural development groups, mainly LEADER groups (schemes put in place by the EU Commission in the early 1990s to develop rural areas through channels other than on-farm activity), a number of important walks such as the River Suck Walk, the Miners' Walk, the Sheep's Head Walk and the Bear Way walks were created.
These walks are now the most threatened because of a change forced on the Government by the EU when the REPS scheme was being renegotiated.
The refusal of the EU to allow the access payments to be made to farmers has created ill-feeling and has led to the part-closure of some of these important new leisure outlets.
Now, it would appear that the Government is not prepared to make up the lost payments from the REPS scheme, which is 75 per cent funded by Brussels.
Recently, in the Dáil, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Eamon Ó Cúiv, revealed that he had been having discussions with the main farm organisation, the IFA, on the issue.
"I have discussed the situation with the IFA and made clear that the concept of open access to the countryside that has always existed is fundamental. I have made clear my view that any proposal for Exchequer payment for access would not in principle be acceptable," he said.
However, he did reveal that he was in the process of establishing a strategy group with a broad remit which would be monitoring the operation of the delivery of the Rural/Agri-Tourism measures under the Rural Development Programmes.
Nominations have been invited from the farm organisations, rural organisations, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, the Irish Sports Council and tourism promotion groups. The inaugural meeting of the Rural/Agri-Tourism Strategy Group is scheduled to take place this month.
"The walkways access situation will be included on the agenda for discussion in the Strategy Group," he said.
"Discussions are being scheduled with FÁS to ascertain the extent to which work on walkways maintenance might involve farmers. Ultimately, I believe that the access problem can be resolved through a local community approach, recognising that the value of walkways in generating tourism accommodation and income accrues to the community where farmers and other rural dwellers live," said the Minister.
According to Gerry Gunning, the senior IFA official who has been handling the access issue, the possibility of replacing some of the income lost when the access payments were banned by Brussels may be attractive to the farmers involved.
"I understand the proposal is to pay farmers for maintenance and building of styles and the general up-keep of walks and I am not sure how that would go down," he said.
It had also been suggested, he said, that the losses being experienced by farmers might be made up by hoteliers and others in the tourism sector, but that had not met with approval from that sector.
He readily accepted that there had been problems on some of the walks created under the REPS scheme and in other areas.
"I know that some farmers have complained about gates being left open and livestock disturbed but the main problem is the loss of the payments in REPS. All it takes is for one farmer along a walk to prevent access and that means the entire walk is no longer available," he said.
The Minister rejected the idea that any farmers had stopped people walking traditional rights of way and said that in any cases he had examined, there had been no right of way in existence.
He accepted that some farmers had not seen the linkage between rural tourism and allowing access despite the fact that their neighbours, who are also farmers, might be involved in Bed & Breakfast operations.
He suggested that what he termed "a more flexible approach" by the Departments of Agriculture, Tourism and Bord Fáilte, might ease some of the difficulties.
While just over 300 farmers in the State have been directly hit by the REPS payment cuts, there is potential for a far greater problem to arise on thousands of Irish farms. Many hundreds more are involved in a new row with the Government over the designation of their lands as Special Areas of Conservation or National Heritage Areas (SACs and NHAs).
Farmers do not want their lands designated because they say such designations freeze and reduce farming activity to such an extent as to make commercial farming unviable.
Already, the IFA is preventing inspectors from Dúchas, the heritage service, from entering lands on the grounds that the compensation being offered is too little and the restrictions too many. Five per cent of the State's landmass is involved.
With increasing militancy in the farming community there are those who advocate banning fishermen and other sporting organisations from their lands. They see this as a way of putting pressure on the Government to help them get over their current financial difficulties.
For the time being, the farm organisations remain outside the new Partnership deal and relations with the Government and with the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Joe Walsh, in particular, are at an all time low.
While the fishing federations have continuing good relations with the farmers, and the national gun clubs movement, the National Association of Regional Game Councils (NARGC), has a special relationship with the IFA in particular, interference with these sectors would have very serious tourism and social implications.
It would appear that those who believe there will always be a welcome in the hillsides of Ireland could be wrong, and it will eventually take some creative thinking to ensure that whatever welcome is left, remains there.