Mr. Aaron Byrne:

The local authority was approached in 2023. I was on a Wicklow recreation committee call and I was new to the job at the time. I knew the local authority was on the call and that the municipal districts are generally seen as responsible for items on trails. In my naivety I asked it to look at a few places. Of course the municipal districts are completely stretched and they are not really set up for going up into parts of the Wicklow Way and remote places. Through County Wicklow Partnership I put together a proposal to get funding from the local authority. In other words, if it could not give us the people I asked it to give us the money and we would get the people. A year later, Bernie Byrne started on the project. It is 85% funded by the local authority and Coillte, the NPWS and Dublin Mountains Partnership also contribute. Each of them contributed €5,000 per year for the Wicklow Way management group funding. This was the first part of the funding of €20,000. I suggested to the Wicklow Way management group that it give me this funding so that I could put it towards one person in a company vehicle supplied with tools. Everything is very light touch. No major jobs are undertaken by the maintenance crew. The local authority supplemented the rest. It has since added budget lines in its annual budget, and the funding is increasing year on year, which is very positive. If we can get a second person we can start to make a real difference. For the local authority, 75% of the volume of ORIS infrastructure being planted every year is in the ownership of the local authority. It is in its interests to look after this investment. Some of the other ORIS projects do not require maintenance, such as a footfall and rainfall monitoring project in the uplands this coming cycle. The local authority is pretty keen to keep trail maintenance separated from the overall municipal district maintenance that takes place in parks.