Mr. Aaron Byrne:

The Wicklow Way is an iconic trail for the nation but, obviously, it is our gem. It was opened in 1982. We have a management group comprising Coillte, the national park, Dublin Mountains Partnership and the local authority. The 132 km trail traverses all of their lands, not to mention the lands of private landowners. The part of the trail owned by private landowners comprises just 23 km of the 132 km. These are the guys who are in the walks scheme.

As the committee can see, there is a huge overlap of stuff that somebody needs to have an overarching view of. Between the Wicklow Way management group and the Wicklow outdoor recreation committee, that is achieved. Those people make decisions about the best way to manage all of that. The establishment of the trail crews was one of their initiatives. The ORIS applications are also channelled through that committee. That is good because everybody can have an input into decisions on what funding we apply for. Before I got there, we applied for funding for counters and since then, I have installed them. We are starting to get counter data from places, and surprising information from them. The Sugarloaf counter, for instance, is putting up 120,000 people per year. That is a lot of people. You can see how easy it is to get your money back from a €500,000 investment with 120,000 people every year using it.

As the Senator says, there is a commercial benefit for those who are operating small businesses in the county but there is also a health benefit for those who use the infrastructure we are building. By keeping it in good condition for ourselves in Wicklow, we will have knock-on benefits for the tourism division. We kind of look at it in a way that involves thinking about what we want in Wicklow in the first instance. If we build something nice for ourselves, we will build something nice for visitors to come and see.

On other initiatives we have, Ms Coad started the "Wicklow Outdoors" brand a couple of years ago. We also have a brand for the Wicklow Way now. These are useful tools to get people interested, and to familiarise them with the fact that there are people looking after all of this stuff. You can buy things. They are tokens, maybe, but they create an awareness that there is a whole team of people behind the outdoor recreation strategy and the delivery of that in Wicklow.