Brian Walsh (Galway West, Independent)
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606. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his views on cycle greenways being critical infrastructure in the context of the compulsory purchase order process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3793/15]

Brian Walsh (Galway West, Independent)
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607. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to use the compulsory purchase order process to facilitate the development of cycle greenways; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3794/15]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 606 and 607 together.

It is a matter for the County Council in charge of delivering a specific project to consider access to land on a case by case basis and take a multi-criteria approach in the route selection process. In the event of a proposed route traversing private land there are a number of options that can be considered by the authority the first being the permissive access model.  This 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.

As stated above, negotiated permissive access from the perspectives of cost and public ownership has value but, for projects of national scale, consideration must  be given to land purchase by agreement or if necessary by CPO. In the context of developing major cycling infrastructure projects that traverse long sections of privately owned land and involve major state investment it would be precarious to rely on permissive access where the associated agreements may be withdrawn at any time without recourse to the State.

While I fully support the need to consider negotiated financial agreements or, if required, CPO, I certainly recommend that all other options are considered before land purchase is decided on. There is no one size fits all approach to this.