Sir, – In last Saturday’s Irish Times Magazine article entitled “Hillwalking hotels” (February 18th), you rightly draw attention to the pleasure to be obtained in walking the Vartry Reservoir Loop near Roundwood in Co Wicklow. However, how many of your readers know that, without prior notice, the loop around the Upper Vartry reservoir was blocked for most of 2022? It took a lot of local negotiation and a protest from Keep Ireland Open to get that loop restored.
Closures like this are not uncommon around the country. At our AGM last Saturday, we heard of another recent unauthorised blockage of an access to a beach near Glenties in Co Donegal, and there are plenty of other such cases.
Even when in court people provide significant evidence of how a route has been walked for generations, it is no guarantee that the court will come down in favour of open access, as members of Enniskerry Walking Club discovered some time ago.
Keep Ireland Open exists to fight such closures on behalf of the general public. County councils are usually unwilling to step in to resist them and a lot of the reason for their non-interventional approach seems to be the lack of robust legislation to establish and extend rights of way. For that reason, our primary aim is to argue for robust legislation akin to the English and Welsh Countryside & Rights of Way Act.
With more people, both Irish residents and tourists, wishing to access the countryside, it is high time to pass legislation guaranteeing and extending rights of way. The Office of the Planning Regulator states that: “Public rights of way are an essential part of the amenity and recreational facilities available to the public, especially in order to experience the physical attributes of local communities, whether they provide access to rivers, seashores, lakes, uplands or other amenities.”
It is time for the Oireachtas to act. – Yours, etc,
ROBERT DOWDS,
Chairperson,
Keep Ireland Open,
Clondalkin,
Dublin 22.