At a time when both the farming sector and the tourist industry are under pressure, a valuable opportunity is being lost to earn foreign currency and create jobs.
Walking and hiking tourists have become so fed up with the difficulties and the unpleasantness which can be involved in accessing the Irish countryside that they are taking their business elsewhere.
The statistics are damning. According to Bord Fáilte figures, the number of international walking and hiking visitors declined from 322,000 ten years ago to 266,000 in 1999 and reached 241,000 in 2001. In spite of that decline, overseas walking tours were still worth about €144 million to the economy, more than that earned by golf, angling and cycling. But, instead of developing this lucrative business, the authorities failed to take remedial action when individuals and groups of farmers closed off access to places of particular beauty and responded aggressively to walkers who crossed their land.
The result has been that rural tourism suffered disproportionately following the downturn in international travel in recent years. Keep Ireland Open, a group representing recreational users of the countryside, has urged an Oireachtas committee examining property rights under the Constitution to provide for a "freedom to roam", where this is compatible with protecting the environment, privacy and other issues. Part of the existing problem stems from the withdrawal, two years ago, of an element of the EU's Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) under which payments had been made to allow for public access to farmland.
An upsurge in the closure of walking routes by farmers was intended to put pressure on the Government to finance a replacement scheme. But, instead of securing replacement funding, the closures encouraged foreign visitors to do their future walking in Wales and Scotland. Wales gets two million walking visitors annually. And the Scottish Assembly is preparing legislation on "freedom to roam" in order to develop its growing outdoors business. Organised walking tours are highly developed in France, Spain, Italy and Greece. And there is no reason the business should not be expanded here, bringing benefits in terms of employment, transport, accommodation and cash flow.
For that to happen, however, the Government needs to get to grips with a worsening situation particularly affecting tracts of the west coast. Farming organisations, tourist interests and community groups must all become involved in resolving these difficulties as a matter of urgency. There are benefits to be had for all in properly regulated and funded walking arrangements that provide easy access to the countryside.