It is a source of regret that the Irish Farmers' Association has this week - and not for the first time - been to the forefront of a backward and sectional attitude towards promoting the widest possible enjoyment of the countryside.
In this instance, as a result of submissions to Wicklow County Council by the IFA, 47 rights of way and 33 access routes were removed this week from the county's draft development plan. Because of this, no rights of way will be included in the Wicklow County Development Plan for 2005-2010 when it takes effect in January. The 47 rights of way and access routes, including the Bray-to-Greystones cliff walk, will remain lost in municipal limbo for at least a year while a sub-committee of the council, which does not as yet exist, considers what to do. The sub-committee is expected to report by June 2005. However, the omens are not good: another sub-committee of the council charged with examining problems with regard to the cliff walk has failed to produce a report in almost two years.
This lamentable situation is not unique to Co Wicklow. And it needs to be acknowledged also that right is not all on one side when it comes to access to the countryside. The growing demand for a generalised right to roam raises complex issues which will be resolved neither by belligerent refusal to recognise a need to open up the countryside, nor by arrogant militancy which refuses to acknowledge genuine rural concerns. Far too many landowners have been the victims of the compo-culture mentality, and there are also too many instances of almost wilful ignorance of the countryside code.
Too often, however, and frequently egged on by professional representatives and elected councillors unwilling to see a wider public interest, some landowners have taken their case to unreasonable, at times, illegal limits. Thousands of acres in the west of Ireland have been fenced off in recent years, denying citizens of this State and visitors alike reasonable access to some of the wildest and most beautiful countryside.
Arguments that seek to equate open access to a mountainside or beach on the western seaboard with a right to privacy in a suburban housing estate garden are spurious and should be rejected. However, if local solutions cannot be found to this problem, the Government must examine matters and put forward suggestions that command the widest possible support. The problem of owner liability, if it persists genuinely despite earlier efforts at resolution, must be re-examined. But neither individual landowners nor the IFA should have a veto over access to the countryside. Ireland belongs to all of us.