Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 15 May 2014
21. Deputy Seán Kyne asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if the present model of permissive access is working in terms of the introduction of greenways at locations around the country; and if he shares the view that alternative models may need to be examined; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21489/14]
View answerThe permissive access model is a worthy mechanism for certain cycling and walking projects, particularly on a local level. It is a low cost community based model that provides access to the natural environment without interfering with the property rights of the landowners concerned. In many cases, it is the landowners who become champions of the project, supporting the role of the local authorities and the work of agencies such as Fáilte Ireland.
In terms of the best land access models for greenway delivery, the use of publicly owned land is advantageous from the perspective of reducing costs. Negotiated permissive access, from the perspective of cost and community ownership, continues to have value but, for projects of national scale, consideration must be given to land purchase agreements or CPO.
The process of obtaining permissive access is resource intensive and I would have my doubts that such a process could be deployed on projects of national scale where agreement would need to be secured with hundreds of landowners.
Greater investment is now being provided for greenways and it would be precarious to rely on permissive access where the associated agreements may be withdrawn at any time without recourse to the State. Of course, it will be a matter for all developers of cycling infrastructure to consider access to land on a case by case basis and to take a multi-criteria approach in the route selection process. The key consideration should always be to select an approach that will maximise the future use of the amenity concerned.
In the context of developing major cycling infrastructure projects that traverse long sections of privately owned land, I fully support the need to consider CPO. However, I would certainly recommend that all other options are exhausted before land purchase is considered.
