Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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820. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development if she will grant farmers entry into the walks scheme for a green light for the Bantry active way as soon as possible; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31491/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Walks Scheme, which my Department administers, contracts landholders to undertake maintenance work on National Waymarked Ways and other priority trails that traverse their lands. The landholders receive modest payments for maintenance work undertaken in line with agreed work plans.

Rural Recreation Officers, who manage the Scheme at local level, help to ensure that these walks are maintained at an approved standard, with repairs and improvements made as appropriate. They may, from time to time, approach my Department to have additional landholders brought on to the Scheme, including where additional sections of the a trail may be brought off-road.

Permission has recently been granted by my Department to include a small number of additional landholders onto the Walks Scheme in West Cork. Their lands now form part of the Sheep's Head Way following work to reroute a section of that trail off-road. This new section of the Sheep's Head Way also forms part of the Bantry Active Way.

I understand that work is ongoing at local level to bring further sections of the Sheep's Head Way off-road and that these sections would also form part of the Bantry Active Way. Any such requests to bring additional landholders onto the Sheep's Head Way will be considered by my Department on a case by case basis and as funding allows.