Madam, - In response to Roger Garland's letter of April 5th, I would like to address some of the issues he raised with regard to hill-walking.
The ICSA has established that the vast majority of farmers don't want money from hill-walkers who wish to walk their land. The key issue here is permission. I wonder if Mr Garland would have any objection if he looked out of his kitchen window every morning and saw strangers traipsing through his back garden? I dare say he would not like it one little bit. So please explain how, by Mr Garland's reasoning, that it is not only all right to do this outside the confines of Dublin 4, but that farmers should be compelled to allow it? And by some curious logic, farmers should be so grateful to be allowed to earn two-thirds of the average industrial wage that they should automatically dispose of their birthright to facilitate Mr Garland and his ilk?
The letter also claims that most farmers are subsidised by the Irish taxpayer. Of course they are, Mr Garland. The subsidies (currently in their death throes) were introduced to complement the existence of a cheap food policy which has been sustained over a number of years. A policy, dare I say, from which Mr Garland and his members have presumably benefited.
What the letter, interestingly, failed to address was the subject of liability. Under current legislation, farmers may well find themselves on the wrong side of a court case if Mr Garland or any of his members were to ramble on to someone else's land, trip up and hurt themselves.
So really, Mr Garland, don't you think that it is time to wake up and smell the coffee? Farmers have rights too, and I and my organisation will do everything possible to ensure that those rights are not trampled on by a horde of lost hill-walkers. - Yours, etc,
MALCOLM THOMPSON, President, Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association (ICSA), Portlaoise, Co Laois.