Farmers' rights versus walkers' wants

To begin with, it looked like just a court case involving a foul-mouthed farmer rounding on innocent hill-walkers; the landowner's right to keep his private property private versus the walkers' paradise of the Bord Failte marketing pamphlet.

Andy McSharry, a farmer whose 225 acres of rough, mountainy land abuts bare Ben Bulben's head in Co Sligo, was the man whose liberal use of "threatening, filthy, foul language" and fist-sized stones (one of which struck a 63-year-old walker, John Fitzgerald, in the chest), found him at Grange District Court this week. "He shouted, get to f . . k out of here, and repeated the same basic sentence over and over," attested another aggrieved walker, there to bear witness to yet another confrontation with McSharry some months later on October 24th.

The farmer was duly fined and bound to the peace, but not before the judge noted that if the "no trespassing" signs erected by McSharry had been heeded, there would have been no need for a court case in the first place. John Fitzgerald's excuse was that, as a hill-walker of 50 years, he believed such signs were often erected by farmers to avoid any legal liability. As it turned out, Andy McSharry's signs meant just what they said.

It was not the first case of its kind to end in a District Court in recent weeks. October was a wicked month. A 33-year-old Donegal farmer from Malin Head got a fine and a two-month suspended sentence for verbally abusing and threatening an English journalist who was in the area as a guest of Bord Failte to research a tourism feature.

He and his family were walking along a public beach in October when the farmer accosted them and compounded the offence by adding: "What makes it worse is that you are English. Do you not realise the Irish hate the English? You are the scum of the earth . . ."

Other recent cases which didn't make it to the courts include a French family with two small children, who paused to picnic in a "vast" field near Blarney, only to have two "big shepherd dogs" set upon them by "a very angry man". Another woman claims to have been threatened by a gun in Connemara.

David Herman, of the campaigning group Keep Ireland Open, has written of leading a group of French tourists on a walking holiday of the north-west, where they were assailed by another foul-mouthed farmer, this one waving a stick.

Mr Herman is also the man who wrote the local guide which included McSharry's lands as part of a supposedly accessible walking route. According to Mr Herman, his understanding was that a local group had obtained permission from the landowners to include them, when in fact it hadn't. Thus, according to McSharry, the first he heard of his accessibility was in 1992, when the information had already appeared in books, maps and videos.

A note was later inserted into Mr Herman's guide to say these walks should not be used, but by then any goodwill on McSharry's part had vanished. "From that day to this, my back has been up," he told Marian Finucane. "It's wrong that this can be done. There is a price tag on everything." Then the signs went up: "No trespassing" and - signifying his sense of outrage and being under siege - "Another Drumcree".

By way of explanation for subsequent events, he described a hard, frugal existence as a sheep farmer, of being forced to sell land to meet bank debts in the early days, and of then being confronted on this "dear" land - "It's dear to me and I won't be tramped on" - by groups of up to 30 walkers at a time, breaking gate-locks and trailing marauding dogs.

His neighbour, Paddy Gilmartin, described the fright of the average mountainy sheep at the sight of 30 walkers with dogs; the only thing worse than malnutrition for a mountainy sheep, he said, is fright. He also spoke darkly of an "agenda" involving angling, caravaning, caving, horse-riding and camping among others; all "innocent" enough, he conceded, if you have no livestock.

Sheep had been "put over the cliffs and killed", he claimed; tourists had allowed their dogs to attack the sheep and drive them on to the main Sligo-Donegal road. Andy McSharry intimated that he had planned to go to jail rather than pay the fine, but other farmers were collecting the money to pay it, "and I think the point has been proven".

For all that, the real sticking point for both men, it emerged, is money.

"It's private property . . . I'd let them through if paid," said McSharry.

So the old miners' road running through his land to Ben Bulben can be had, at a price.

"I would sell the miners' road, my part of it, and I'd sell the right of way through the mountain, if someone wants to buy it. We're told there's no money in hill-walking . . . but it's an expensive hobby. Look at the gear; it'd cost a week's wages for a pair of boots."

Paddy Gilmartin noted that entertainment in urban areas, such as hotels and guesthouses, has to be paid for. "But we're not paid . . . What we'd like is to give a path on one side of the farm, to let them buy it outright and fence it, make these people responsible for it. I want these people to stay on public property, not to be interfering with the citizens that have owned this land for generations."

The IFA, meanwhile, is keeping its head down. Its view is that there are only a couple of "flash-points" in the State, one at Ben Bulben, the other at Uggool Beach in Mayo, where 11 years ago a local farmer erected fencing below the high-water mark, apparently after taking fright at the sight of a busload of hill-walkers being disgorged on to the beach.

Although David Herman would dispute the IFA's numbers - he claims there are "at least a dozen serious problems current at any one time" - he seemed to support its view regarding location, noting that these problems "only seem to be in the west, yet Wicklow gets 10 times the number of walkers".

In any event, as far as the IFA is concerned, the introduction of the Occupiers' Liability Act in 1995 (which distinguishes between a landowner's liability to invited guests and recreational users) and the adoption of the Farmland Code of Conduct (supported by 15 organisations), effectively addressed any serious concerns.

Privately, IFA members find eruptions like Ben Bulben not only embarrassing but also worrying. The last thing anyone wants is a replay of the English wars over the right to roam. The notion of property rights is deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche, said one, "and there's no point in drumming up a big, national debate that will only provoke battle-lines. The problem with setting up battle-lines is that there's no going back".

Gearoid O'Connor, a Sligo farmer and chairman of the IFA's national committee for western and less favoured areas, tries to steer a middle course, despite his belief that the balance is tipped towards the walkers.

"I'd be totally against that right-to-roam notion; there's a group in Mayo that is pushing for that . . . The fact is that the farmer owns the property, and unless the walkers are there with the goodwill of the farmer and are prepared to obey the guidelines, you're not going to be in there. There is a river running through my farm, and I have no problem with people walking through my land to get to it.

"My father is involved in the miners' way walk which runs for 120 miles through five counties, and there has not been one problem with a farmer on it. There has to be give and take.

"Farmers, of course, will be aggrieved if they're not consulted. You'll find places where it's not working, where you have walkers bringing dogs and parking in front of gateways, blocking people. And you'll also find in places that there's a perception of `the filthy rich from the east coast coming down to trample our property'."

He points to the spirit of co-operation between landowner and walker evident in the way-mark walk committee responsible for designating walks for every county in Ireland, which has taken both IFA and ICMSA representatives on board, at Joss Lynam's suggestion.

For a while this week, the battle-lines feared by the IFA seemed to be well on course as discussions collapsed into a classic replay of old urban-rural hostilities.

Most notable from the hill-walker corner was a tendency to demand right of access as a quid pro quo for EU farm subsidies, with the underlying suggestion that taxpayers are invariably urban dwellers and farmers merely caretakers for urban hobbyists. The proliferation of fences and forestry, along with concerns about over-grazing and the use of barbed wire also came up for mention.

The landowners' dilemma got short shrift, even those who have a case. Farmers who up to 10 years ago might not have seen a stranger for miles have had to contend with groups as large as 50 - some bristling with aggression and arrogance and with no affiliation to any recognised walking club - suddenly descending on their territory as hill-walking developed into the State's fastest-growing pursuit.

At a time when small farmers see their way of life threatened from every angle, when they are hanging on to their land and frugal living by sheer pride and stubbornness, and in a State where murder has been committed for the sake of a small field, it is hardly surprising that what the IFA calls "flash-points" occur.