Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

There is much more work going on behind the scenes than people realise. As I outlined when I launched the report at a meeting of Comhairle na Tuaithe at the ploughing championships, Fáilte Ireland has been working on getting agreement on a series of walks. It has also outlined the required works that need to be done in many cases. The option to use the rural social scheme is a very live one because many farmers are not particularly interested in doing it. Some of them have too much work and they would rather local farmers did it through the rural social scheme. We are still in line to achieve our objective and I hope we can do this with Fáilte Ireland in the new year.

Many of these walks do not need a great amount of work — just signage and bits and pieces here and there. Many of them are over open countryside and people often do not want the walkway to be very developed. The international experience has been that they often want the obstructions made surmountable rather than removed. They are not looking for a walkway that is a pathway. In other words, they want to walk over the mountains. I am fairly confident we can deliver on that aspect.

I also discussed with the IFA the unsatisfactory situation where people access mountains and hills through enclosed land by going over field gates and across fields. We will try to get local solutions to the problem of accessing a hill through a little passageway without going through someone's field that might have cattle or crops in it. That would ease many of the difficulties that were there in the past. If I had an open mountain and a closed field, I would not consider them as the same thing. In legal terms they are the same, but in practical terms they are very different.

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