Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In 2009, legislation relating to rights of way was temporarily sorted. Since then, many people faced last year's dilemma as there are serious flaws in the 2009 Act. The Rural Independent Group made several recommendations to Government to defer the looming deadline to register the easement of rights of way by the end of November this year. We welcome that common sense has prevailed and that there is now a commitment to conduct a time-bound review to see what is the best interim strategy with regard to rights of way.

There were two errors in the amendment made. One related to access to homes through rights of way where the council did not have a charge on the access road. The second related to farms that can only be accessed through rights of way the council does not own. The system originally seemed good as it did not involve an application to the Circuit Court, but easement of rights of way can only be acquired on registration of a court order. A right of way has to be registered with the Land Registry. This has proven very difficult in many cases. One example of this arises where several people live on a stretch of roadway that is not public and one of these people decides to sell. Each person on the roadway must then agree to open the right of way to the new buyer. If they do not, the matter has to go to court, pitting neighbour against neighbour and resulting in anxiety, stress and considerable cost. Sales of such properties have fallen through and properties have been sold at greatly reduced prices. If people do not validate their position regarding a right of way, they will find themselves in a very difficult position when selling their property or raising a mortgage.

In a village in County Limerick, a person was living in a house that was built by the county council before it became Limerick City and County Council. The owner passed away and left the house he had bought off the council to his four children. The four children are housed and decided to sell the property and divide the proceeds between them. They then found out that, when the county council did its land conveyancing many years ago, it left out a small strip of land, 6 ft deep and the width of the house, between the front wall of the house and the main street in this particular village. This has resulted in considerable costs for the family. They have gone back 87 years and have found out that no member of the family had owned the land the council originally built the houses on. They have lost three sales as a result of this strip of land still not being registered correctly. I am talking about a strip 6 ft wide and 20 ft long. The county council has put in wheelchair access on this land for the person who lived in the house and has done maintenance within the house but this issue has fallen through the cracks. The council should have bought the property back in light of the mistake it made in its land conveyancing. It has put the family through an awful lot of stress and anxiety because of this mistake. The price of this house has actually reduced by €50,000 because the family want to sell it and have been told it could take up to seven years for this to be sorted out. There are people on housing lists waiting for houses. Considering the number of people who have tried to buy the house, it is unbelievable that this could happen.

Deputy Crowe mentioned graveyards earlier. There are an awful lot of graveyards in the middle of fields where I am from. I refer to the likes of Ballynakill and Anhid. There are an awful lot of graveyards within the county area where people going to see their deceased loved ones have to rely on rights of way. I have visited many of these graveyards where my own family members are buried. I am thankful to the people who let us use these rights of way but it should be a legal right.

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