Madam - Maybe we should keep our feet on the ground, so to speak, before getting carried away by your story "New National Walking Route for Kilkenny" (Nov 11th).
This route is only 35km long. Because we have no legislation giving recreational users rights to access private land it is a permissive footpath, and so can be blocked by any landowner on the route for any reason or none. It adds to a meagre network of 3,000km of waymarked long-distance routes and even less of other walkways. Because of objections by landowners only 12 per cent of the long-distance routes cross private land; they are therefore all too often routed through dull State coniferous forest or on public roads.
The landowners in Kilkenny seem to have been pretty generous and they deserve our thanks. However, contrast this with a stormy IFA meeting in Westport last month, which threatened once again to block off hill land to walkers, a threat that has been carried out several times before now. This latest threat was because Minister Eamon Ó Cuív has ignored the IFA's walkways scheme, which would cost the taxpayer a cool €400 million plus per year if Ireland is to have a comprehensive system of rights of way. The issue of freedom to roam (ie the right of walkers to wander the 7 per cent of the country in rough grazing land) has not even been addressed here. No doubt the farmers are quite capable of coming up with an enormous sum based on the number of square millimetres they are prepared to "graciously" concede.
In spite of tiny advances trumpeted as major successes, count me out. I have written a number of guidebooks to mountain areas in Ireland, but since, unlike in neighbouring jurisdictions, I have no legal right to describe routes crossing private land it is impossible for me to continue. Instead I have bought a house in Anglesey and hope to write guidebooks to Wales. Wales and England have 225,000km of rights of way and vast areas covered by freedom to roam legislation.
You know exactly where you can legally walk. You have a welcome almost everywhere and if you haven't the state will intervene to support you. None of that applies here. -Yours, etc,
DAVID HERMAN, Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.