Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It tells us about the future. It keeps talking about the pilot scheme as if it existed. The Minister of State said there was talk about expanding it and all of these plans and so on, as if the pilot scheme existed. It says that insurance was put in place in 2021, as if the farmers knew about. Binn Shleibhe is the mountain at the back of my house and I happen to know the farmers who live around the mountain. The farmers do not seem to be aware whether they have given consent because some of the younger farmers were not there in 2008. In any case, it was too long a period of time to work on whatever was agreed in 2008. The world has moved on and changed dramatically.

The second thing is they do not seem to have any knowledge of this insurance policy the Minister of State referred to. The Minister of State said that through this process a public liability insurance policy was secured by the Department for the two existing mountain access project areas, the MacGillycuddy Reeks and Binn Shleibhe in Galway. I was approached by farmers in Binn Shleibhe and they do not seem to have any details on this insurance policy, and it is their land.

Will the Minister of State carry back a request from me that there would be an immediate, urgent consultation with all of the farmers in the two pilot area as to exactly what is going on, when consent was given, on what basis agreement was reached, whether they were made aware of this insurance policy, and if they have had sight of it? These are fundamental issues because there was one key ingredient to the success of this, which was farmers' support, consent and agreement. We are in danger of losing that through lack of interaction with the farmers. No other local group is any good. It has to be with the landowners. We know well enough in Ireland about the traditions of owning land, how precious land is to people and how they are very anxious to preserve their rights in their own land.

They are generous with it as long as one does that.

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