Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 September 2025

Joint Committee on Social Protection, Rural and Community Development

Embracing Ireland's Outdoors - National Outdoor Recreation Strategy 2023-2027: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Aaron Byrne:

The regulations and guidelines are fairly clear regarding horses, bikes, litter and camping. Everybody knows you are not supposed to litter. If we take the recreation amenities as a separate entity, I do not know how many wardens we would need to really police something like that. It is a huge area. It has so many little niches and, off up into the mountains, 120 km-long trails. It would require an awful lot of people to police that. Maybe it is not a policing issue but more a community one. Everybody in the community is a set of eyes to police antisocial behaviour. We try to impart the message to people to look after their own amenities as best they can. I do not think it is feasible to police the whole place 24-7. It is generally a late night problem rather than a middle of the day problem. It is challenging on that front. We certainly would prefer to have more litter wardens and dog wardens, but that is not the only answer.

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