Madam, - Joe Walker's claim (January 28th) that a minority of hill-walkers are responsible for the rising level of conflict over countryside access is misinformed and misleading.
Mr Walker owns land in the Glencree Valley through which a short section of the old coach road to Dublin runs. This route, mapped by Jacob Neville in 1760, and referred to repeatedly since then in a variety of publications and shown on Ordnance Survey and Coillte maps, is important because it enables recreational walkers as well as locals to walk from Curtlestown to Kilmolin, where visitors often park or catch the bus, without risking life and limb on the main Glencree-Enniskerry road. It has been in use since time immemorial.
Mr Walker has planted trees across this roadway. On nine occasions over the last year, he has, on his own admission, erected fences - some of barbed wire - to block access to this long-established route. Locals and others have removed these obstacles.
For Mr Walker to suggest, as he did in his letter, that 95 per cent of hill-walkers would support his right to behave in this fashion is nonsense. Suffice it to say that the Irish Ramblers, An Óige, the Holiday Fellowship Walking Group, Na Coisithe - in short all of the main hill-walking groups - have made applications to Wicklow County Council for the old coach road to be secured as a right-of-way in the forthcoming County Development Plan. So, significantly, have a number of Mr Walker's neighbours.
The fact that the Mountaineering Council of Ireland is still twiddling its thumbs on this matter - and all other matters of rights-of-way - merely indicates how far behind its main constituent parts this ineffective body finds itself.
For Joe Walker to brand as extremists those of us who merely seek for Ireland the same rights as walkers enjoy in the rest of Europe is a fair indication of his mind-set.
We need a legislative framework in which those who block access to rights-of-way, where they does not realistically interfere with their privacy or livelihood, are dealt with by the law. At present no such legal framework exists.
In truth, it is not walkers seeking basic rights who have brought the issue of access to its present sore point. Rather, it is a minority of landowners with 18th-century attitudes to land ownership and social responsibility.
The tragedy of the present impasse on the access issue is that no other pastime holds as much promise for bridging the rural-urban divide as hill-walking. - Yours, etc.,
ALBERT SMITH, Knocknashee, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow.