Is it right or fair that we as taxpayers should have to shell out millions so that we as individuals may be permitted to climb our own mountains and visit our own lakes and rivers? asks Mary Raftery. And that if we do not do so, we should then be denied such access forever?
It is a fundamental question, and one which goes to the heart of what defines the public good. The Labour Party does not fudge this issue. It has recently published a Private Members' Bill and discussion document on access to the hills for walkers. This has ruled out payment to farmers for permitting such access through their land.
It does, however, propose that where a farmer is involved in providing facilities, in conjunction with the local authority, for walkers (car parks, walkways, signage etc), then that farmer should receive appropriate payment. It further proposes that farmers be fully indemnified, and it identifies the duties of walkers to behave responsibly while passing through private property.
The two main farmers' organisations howl with rage at the idea that people could walk where they like across farmland. The Irish Farmers' Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association have attacked the Labour proposals as akin to nationalisation of the country's land.
They have their own counter-proposal. They argue that landowners should receive substantial public funding for simply letting people cross their property. What they want, in essence, is money for nothing.
They argue, with growing shrillness, that their own private property rights are paramount, and that this includes the right to keep everyone out. The ICMSA has engaged in unsavoury personalised attacks on particular Labour TDs (Ruairí Quinn and Liz McManus) by suggesting that they would take umbrage if the people of Ireland tried to trek through their front gardens.
This argument comparing farmland to front gardens is patently silly. Most people's gardens do not block access to the country's major beauty spots, to its mountains, rivers and lakes. If they did, there would be a clear case for a compulsory purchase order to permit unhindered public access to such beauty spots.
Secondly, those of us with gardens do not enjoy massive injections of taxpayers' money in order to allow us to live off these same gardens.
Anyone receiving such vast public funding (90 per cent of the average family farm income comes from subsidy) has a clear duty to pay attention to the public good. Many farmers do just that, through permitting access to their land and by compliance with good and environmentally-sound agricultural practice.
However, farmer organisations are a different matter. Their decades-long resistance to measures such as the nitrates directive delayed critical protection for our rivers, lakes and drinking water reservoirs. Their current campaign against no-notice inspections of their farms to ensure that they comply with a variety of regulations is very much part of a pattern which has consistently put their own self-interest above any concept of the public good.
As they become increasingly strident on the issue of access to their land, it has been clear for some time that, despite all the high talk of constitutional protection for their private property rights, farmers will sell them to the highest bidder.
It would be a shame if this kind of naked greed were allowed to wreck the Labour Party's very worthwhile proposals. Its document argues that the creation of a proper framework for walker access around the country has the potential to benefit entire rural communities.
At a time when farming itself is declining, and a rapidly-increasing proportion of farmers now have off-farm jobs, it is clearly in the interests of the wider rural community that any and all schemes likely to enhance local economic activity should be actively exploited.
The negative attitude of some farmers towards opening up access across their lands is damaging not only the leisure interests of tourists and urban dwellers. It is also hugely detrimental to the development of their own local areas and the interests of the non-farming members of rural communities.
The great difficulty, as with so many areas involving farmers, is the absence of an equally large and powerful lobby group to argue against them. The default tendency of politicians is cushion-like, bearing the impression of the last person to sit on them. Farmers get to use that cushion far too often.
In this context, it is somewhat depressing that Fine Gael has been less than effusive about supporting the Labour Party's initiative. Traditionally seen as the party with the closest links to the large farmers so ably represented by the Irish Farmers' Association, this is an issue which will test Fine Gael's mettle. With all its talk of change, it has displayed little inclination to alter the status quo.
Labour has intelligently realised that in this area it is not possible to be all things to all men (and women). It has taken a stand and a lead and deserves credit.