Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to discuss the issue of public rights of way in the country. I expect this is a matter for the Department of Justice but I nonetheless want to thank the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for being here tonight to take this issue.

The background to me raising this, apart from having some experience in dealing with rights of way issues where we have tried to include them in county development plans over the years, is that a case was brought to my attention recently of two hillwalkers in Enniskerry, two elderly, retired and absolute gentlemen, who loved nothing more than walking through many of the walkways and hills of Wicklow. They became involved in a situation where an alleged right of way had been blocked by the landowner. This evolved into a very complex and long court case situation. The case has been decided and has been publicly documented. The two gentlemen will not mind me mentioning their names, which are Mr. Leonach and Mr. Barry. These are two highly regarded stalwarts of the community in Enniskerry.

They have ended up in a situation where they owe somewhere in the region of €40,000 as a result of this fine. This is a very bizarre case, extremely interesting for any of us who are reading it from the outside, but obviously very harrowing and stressful for the two gentlemen involved. They are not men of means by any manner and this is a huge debt for them to incur at this stage in their lives. I have met with both of them and have discussed the issues around rights of way. It is a very complex part of Irish law, land use law and our Constitution in which we enshrine private land ownership and the rights which go with that. We also know that we are a nation that appreciates and loves our countryside and we have had these walkways in place which people have used for many years such as Mass paths, access to graveyards, and across old country coach roads, etc.

Currently, under our Irish law, we have not really enacted laws to allow us to progress this and to establish rights of way and how we deal with those contested rights of way. We rely much of the time on old English laws. We have judges trying to interpret old maps, precedent law and the common law system. It is very complex and convoluted.

Our county councils are obliged - we are going through the planning Bill at the moment - to include rights of way in county development plans. I have been at meetings where we tried to put what we thought were rights of way into county development plans, but landowners have come along and said that they have allowed people access to them but they are not rights of way.

We have a situation where we have a very limited number of rights of way going into our county development plans. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, can take this back to the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, and the Department of Justice. I really feel we need to start a process where we can simplify this, or perhaps oversimplify it because it is such a complex area. We need to start to establish what needs to be in place to prove something is a right of way. We have to protect landowners' rights, because it is not just a matter of people just being able to walk all over people's land, although some people would advocate that. I believe we should uphold the rights of landowners but accommodate these old rights of way. We must try to find a solution to the problem. Hopefully, we can start the process here tonight.

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