Farmers to get "sweetener money" for not objecting to greenway.

Outrageous yes

But probably more cost effective than having to go through all the legal battles.

Do you not understand what the "purchase" part of "compulsory purchase" means? If they CPO land then they have to pay for it, and also pay for any additional damage and loss of value to the landowners remaining property

What is your issue? Property rights are protected under the constitution. No matter how special you think you are, just because it suits you to access someone else's property doesn't give you the right to do so.

If cyclists decided that they'd like to take a nice shortcut through the access gate at the side of your house and punch a hole through the wall into the next garden I doubt you'd be so welcoming. NIMBYism at it's finest.

So answer this question. If you have a property, do you have anything around the boundary preventing random access across it?

They wanted to put a bus lane in in Drumcondra a few years ago that would entail taking a tiny slice off the front of gardens and there was uproar. That was with a proposed average of 25k payment https://www.thejournal.ie/busconnects-compensation-gardens-4339627-Nov2018/

Such goodwill payments are common practice and are simply put in in order to use peer pressure to prevent any holdouts. If you work hard you can buy your own land and not be so bitter against anyone getting what is, a relatively insignificant sum of money for goodwill for having their land de-facto seized

Almost every road project has goodwill payments built in to it.

6500 wouldn't be worth a sh1te to a dairy man if it ended up splitting his grazing block. (Example here of a fella who spent over 150k on an underpass to connect two blocks under a road https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/infrastructure-focus-connecting-2-grazing-blocks-with-a-50m-long-underpass-in-co-cork/ . That's how much it was worth for him not to have his land split by a road. Imagine getting indignant if the poor fella was offered 6.5k as goodwill to have it split again and then have eejits on the internet being bitter at you for being offered it!)

Yet if your house was to be compulsory purchased you'd be outraged.

Nimbisy on 2 wheels.

Yes the farmers involved will be paid for the land taken if it's cpo'd , but by the nature of a Greenway it's going to be a long strip , which depending on the farm could have a lot of impact on a a holding - or just a lot of legal hassle for a very small piece of ground and very small amount of cash

So the payment is a sweetner ... Remember this is to encourage those who DON'T really want to sell, or just don't want the hassle ...

Instead of the back garden analogy, think more of someone compulsory purchasing part of your bike , while your on a ride , they may not take the wheels , but you've been stopped mid ride - and someone is going to take a pedal,or water bottle - or 1 brake or your front derailer , oh and can't just give it to the guy - you have to get a solicitor , and an engineer to converse with their solicitor and engineer ( all at their cost ) , but you just want to enjoy your cycle ... Oh and here's the 20 quid for the water bottle ,although maybe I just want the lid. .. 2 euro maybe ,.

Why does it matter? I assume they've crunched the numbers and this is the most cost-effective approach. The landowners are essentially waiving their right to object to the greenway.

What are the thoughts of landowners who have taken over land that was previously CIE railway ground, but became defunct when the railway line was no longer used?

If a local authority etc want to now use the old railway line for the common good and create a greenway, rather than let the old line disappear, what are farmer's thoughts?

I'm not being inflammatory here, just genuinely curious? I have zero knowledge of property law, btw. Do 'Squatters rights' come into play here, if the farmer has being using the ground for a certain amount of time?

I know there was a lot of infrastructure (underpasses/crossing gates/privacy fencing around houses and yards/livestock fencing/etc) for farmers/landowners, included in the construction of my local greenway here in Co Waterford. The line originally ran from Waterford city through Dungarvan on to Mallow, Co Cork, and when there was suggestions of continuing the greenway up to Mallow from Dungarvan, it was said it would be very difficult as most of that section had now been absorbed into agricultural use.

I've acted for farmers in a few of these; when you have reasonable people on both sides they are really simple to solve.

When you have pride, stubbornness in abundance they can be close to impossible to solve.

Typically Local Authorities have a license from Railway company to use property in question.

I'm not sure if Railway company have a wayleave or own the properties in question.

Squatters rights don't have the same currency they used to have particularly if there are deed maps with wayleaves marked etc, but the last thing you want if developing a Greenway is a collection of seperate circuit court equity cases, which are tardy processes at the best of times.

I've never seen money change hands, the negotiations are usually around underpasses/bridges/fencing/material movement/disease control etc rather than anything else.

Each location is different; a dry cattle holding between Klimactomas and Durrow is a different proposition to a dairy farm near Dungarvan one will work fine with gates and crossing when weather is damp the dairy farm being completely incompatible with a Greenway.

I'm not sure endless Greenways is the right way to go anyhow but it's what we are going to do regardless

Don't forget about dogs. Plenty of irresponsible owners will happily let their dogs off the lead. Dogs can worry livestock and have dangerous diseases in their poo, so a farmer could lose a lot of grazing land having a greenaway through their land.

Squatters rights kick in after 12 years for private property and 30 for public property, no idea what a old railway line is. But as said for the Luas they had to buy back a lot of land in Foxrock, I'd say buying back farmland would be a lot cheaper.

You'd have to have gates. Otherwise the livestock could stray onto the greenway instead of crossing it.

I doubt that string would be permitted where cyclists are crossing. They might not see it or understand its significance.

Cattle grids could be installed to allow stock to cross a path frequently , gates where it's less regular , of course cyclists would have to give space when crossing , and it wouldn't be great if a tractor just whizzed across a path - which if it's silage season is perfectly possible -

Not every part of proposed greenways are going through decent fields or near busy farmyards .each case would be different ..

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=608712b2-e249-41a2-a539-a2983623f155

The Irish Position

In September 2007, a High Court case, Dunne v Iarnród Éireann and CIE, set out the test for determining whether a squatter had acquired the property by adverse possession in Ireland. In summary, the principles applied by the court were as follows:

• is there a continuous period of 12 years during which the squatter was in exclusive possession of the lands in question to an extent sufficient to establish an intention to possess the land itself?, and
• is any contended period of possession broken by an act of possession by the landowner? If so, time will only start to run when the act of the landowner terminates.

The court qualified the second part of the test by holding that the sufficiency of the act of possession required for the landowner to break possession and wind the clock back to zero was a very low threshold. This would be satisfied by even the slightest of acts of possession on the part of the landowner. The court also accepted that the future intended use of the land by the landowner could not be relevant except perhaps as one of the indicators relevant to a bona fide held intention to possess, or lack thereof. In this case, the owner, CIE, had carried out works on part of the land and had at one stage reestablished fences between the lands and the neighbour's lands. The court found the actions to be sufficient to start the clock running again.

Only takes 1 adventurous cow try to cross or a few taking the wrong turn when being moved or chased by a loose dog. Then you've got an animal stuck and frantic who's either got a broken leg or about to have one when it tries to get out.

The new type are safer and generally just better but even then you've got a trip hazard for people and a annoyance for anything with smaller wheels.

"The impact on farmers" you mean the ones who stole public land ?

I have no problem with coming to a deal or rerouting if a farmer doesn't want a greenway on their land but FK the ones complaining about greenways on land they stole

No. That’s not what I meant at all.