Madam, - The Enniskerry Walking Association (EWA) has hit the nail on the head when it says that Wicklow County Council will never antagonise landowners ("Wicklow plans for access routes anger walkers", The Irish Times, August 29th). Everything the council has said in the past confirms that impression and the council committee on access continues that craven policy.
This committee admits that "several hundred rights of way" probably exist in the county. Yet we are expected to believe the council is going to curtail proposed developments because of those same rights of way, whose locations it doesn't know (since it won't bother to list them) and against the interests of landowners.
No, it is left to brave individuals like those in the EWA to take on landowners while local and national authorities (and of course the Mountaineering Council of Ireland) bleat about the need for "consultation and consensus" with those who have all the power and will not willingly concede an inch. - Yours, etc,
DAVID HERMAN, Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.