After years of beating around the thorny bush of access to private land for those walking the hills of Ireland, farmers have finally come up with a proposal.
The Irish Farmers' Association claims that its Country Walkways Management Scheme "addresses the issue of wider access to the countryside". In reality, it does no such thing.
Much of the Irish landscape is dotted with forbidding signs ordering trespassers to keep out, asserting loudly that property is private. Many habitual walkers simply ignore these, but they nonetheless have the effect of creating unease or even fear.
When a farmer was jailed last year for threatening a walker on his land, representatives of the main farming organisations met him at the prison gates on his release and publicly supported his stand against trespassers. But Sligo farmer Andy (known as "Bull") McSharry made it clear in newspaper interviews that the issue was really about money. "It's private property," he said at the time. "I'd let them through if they paid."
That is precisely what the IFA's Country Walkways Management Scheme is also about. That each hill-walker would pay each farmer to cross their land is clearly impracticable. The farmers' solution is, as always, to make the State pay, meaning of course the taxpayer. The cost of this scheme, we're told, will be €15 million.
Recent activities by the IFA have shown that the issue of access to land is not confined just to hill-walkers. As the ESB proposes to upgrade its pylon network in a number of areas, farmers are seeking substantial compensation for having the poles on their land - up to €18,000 for each pylon, according to one report. Already these demands have delayed one upgrading scheme in Kerry.
There are two distinct and separate issues here. One is people's right of access to the countryside, the other is whether it is fair or appropriate to compensate landowners for work undertaken on pathways, signage and so forth for those walking across their land.
On the issue of right of access, the IFA's country walkways proposal is entirely silent. Even if farmers secured payment under it, there is no mechanism to legally force them to remove signs or barriers and to permit access.
This absence of legislation to enshrine the right of people to walk the land is at the heart of our difficulties here in Ireland. It is a problem which was equally fraught in the United Kingdom. However, recent legislation there has now firmly established that the principle of the common good is best served by giving the public the right to walk across private farmland.
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2003, finally introduced earlier this year, is a revolutionary piece of legislation which fundamentally alters the balance between public and private interests over most of the hills, lakes and rivers of Scotland. It gives local authorities far-reaching powers to enforce public access and to remove any attempt to block pathways.
All of the arguments we have heard from farmers in this country were employed by Scottish landowners against the reforms.According to Ian McCall of the Scottish Ramblers Association, they tried insisting on getting payment for access to their land and they also argued that they should be fully indemnified by the state in the event of accidents occurring on their property.
However, in Scotland (as indeed here), landowners already enjoy considerable protection against legal action, which was considered adequate by the Scottish legislature.
On the issue of payment, Scottish landowners do receive subventions for work carried out on pathways, gates, stiles and signage, but this is in no way tied to the issue of the right of people to cross their land.
Crucially in Scotland, this right of access was established before there was discussion of payment for maintenance. In this country, we appear to be approaching the matter backwards, by discussing payment before we have even begun to address the issue of right of access.
In Ireland, such debates invariably end up stymied almost before they begin, by invoking the clincher to all arguments about private property - the Constitution. Landowners have always argued that their constitutional private property rights allow them to determine who is allowed or not allowed on to their land.
However, such rights are in fact far from clear and are tempered by the "exigencies of the common good", as the Constitution expresses it.
This point was reinforced last year by the report of the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution, which stated that "no constitutional amendment is necessary to secure a balance through legislation between the rights of individual owners and the common good". It is therefore a matter for the Dáil and legislation to decide where on this issue the common good lies.
Rather than muddling about, discussing means of giving farmers more money, the Government should establish once and for all the legal right of each Irish person (and indeed visitor) to tramp the hills and vales of this country in peace.