Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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550. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to offer incentives and compensation to farmers for any loss or inconvenience caused by allowing greenways or walkways through their lands, given the huge societal and economic potential that such infrastructure can bring; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43839/14]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The economic and social benefits to local communities from the delivery of greenways in their locality is fully recognised by my Department. However, the provision of incentives or compensation to land owners affected by the construction of a greenway through their lands is a matter for the local authority in charge of delivering the specific project given that the consideration of any such payments can substantially increase the cost of project delivery.

The following sets out my Department's views with regard to the various options which can be considered in delivering greenways.

The permissive access model is a worthy mechanism for certain cycling and walking projects, particularly on a local level. It is a low cost community based model that provides access to the natural environment without interfering with the property rights of the landowners concerned. In many cases, the landowners become champions of the project, supporting the role of the local authorities and the work of agencies such as Fáilte Ireland.

 In terms of the best land access models for greenway delivery, the use of publicly owned land is advantageous from the perspective of reducing costs. Negotiated permissive access, from the perspective of cost and public ownership, continues to have value but, for projects of national scale, consideration must be given to land purchase by agreement or if necessary by CPO.  The process of obtaining permissive access is resource intensive and I would have my doubts that such a process could be deployed on projects of national scale where agreement would need to be secured with hundreds or more landowners.

 Greater investment is now being provided for greenways and it would be precarious to rely on permissive access where the associated agreements may be withdrawn at any time without recourse to the State. Of course, as already stated, it will be a matter for all developers of cycling infrastructure to consider access to land on a case by case basis and to take a multi-criteria approach in the route selection process. The key consideration should always be to select an approach that will maximise the future use of the amenity concerned.

 In the context of developing major cycling infrastructure projects that traverse long sections of privately owned land, I fully support the need to consider negotiated financial agreements or, if required, CPO. However, I certainly recommend that all other options are considered before land purchase is decided upon.