Ms Carol Coad:

A lot of what we have achieved has been due to having the right people in the right place at the right time, and a lot of trust between the players involved, which allowed us to be brave. When we sat around the table and said we needed to do something new, we were not shot down. Yes, there was a bit of pushback on how we would do this or that, but it was always "Yes, and" and never "No, that is a bad idea". It was about pulling out the thought process to get everybody on board. I suppose we are just pushy. I was the rural recreation officer, RRO. Five years ago, I left Coillte and got the job as Wicklow RRO. It is fabulous. What a nice job and what a nice area to work in. As a county we went from looking after about 50 participants on the Wicklow Way, and Aaron has added three new trails. It just emerged that I looked after all the outdoor recreation infrastructure scheme, ORIS, applications for the county council because I had the experience with Coillte and because I had the interest. They asked me whether I would write the applications, I did and then we got them all. Suddenly we went from having an RRO to an RRO with a whole heap of other money that had to be spent. As soon as we got those, we got one or two done and then a new cycle was open, so I needed to come up with a whole bunch of more projects and apply for them. Very quickly we had about €3 million in the bank, and me. I put my hand up and said that it was too much work for one person and that I could not do it, so we created the outdoor recreation strategy activation officer role. We also had our own strategy and it was my responsibility to drive that too. We created that role to drive forward with the strategy. I used ORIS really as the delivery mechanism to make that strategy happen. We would look and say, for example, that we have a theme in the strategy about inclusion and disability so I would apply for money to do a feasibility study on having six access points to the outdoors for people with a physical disability. Once the local authority committed to funding that role, because obviously it was helping them quite a lot in getting ORIS funding and getting things done, we then advertised and recruited Aaron into the RRO position, which has now grown to be way more than a standard RRO position. Just being unafraid to keep pushing is very much where we still are now. We are pushy with substance.