Niall Lenoach and Noel Barry, from Enniskerry, became involved in a dispute with a local landowner who restricted access to what they claimed was an ancient path on the Old Coach Road, near the village. <\/p>\n
With Niall, a school teacher and historian, as chairman, and Noel as its secretary, the Enniskerry Walking Association was established in 2004 to promote walking in the local area and to lobby officials to keep routes open. In 2008, the landowner filed a High Court case against Mr Lenoach and Mr Barry, alleging trespass and slander of title, and the judge found that it was not a public right-of-way.<\/p>\n
The case was referred to the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the issue over whether it was a public right-of-way was essentially unproven, and Mr Lenoach and Mr Barry were faced with crippling legal costs.<\/p>\n
Efforts to get the Supreme Court to intervene proved fruitless and in July 2023, the two walking enthusiasts were hit with a bill of \u20ac90,000. That was later reduced to just over \u20ac38,000 and after over two years of fundraising initiatives, some \u20ac22,240 still remains.<\/p>\n
The book by local Kevin Warner, titled Walks Around Enniskerry and the Glencree Valley, has been published to help clear the debts. But as Niall concedes, it is still \u201ca long battle\u201d.<\/p>\n
“This has gone on for 21 years,\u201d he said. “It’s unbelievable, it’s half a lifetime. It was a hugely damaging case, because all over the country now, as a result of the ruling against us, people can block off anywhere. Cemeteries, mountains, lakes, everywhere has been blocked off. They can just say: \u2018Well, okay, take us to court and see if you can afford it\u2019.<\/p>\n
“So the reverberations are much wider than just one local walk being closed in Enniskerry. It affects everywhere, throughout the state. It’s not always down in writing that people have a right of access. And they’ve always assumed that they had a right, because it’s always been there. But it can be just taken away like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beautifully illustrated and with 18 walks to follow of varying length and ability, Walks Around Enniskerry and the Glencree Valley takes hikers into the horseshoe of hills that surround the village. The first and last two walks begin and end in Enniskerry village itself and many of the routes are favourites of the Enniskerry Walking Association (EWA), which since 2004 has organised walks on Tuesday evenings in spring and summer, and on Saturday mornings in autumn and winter.<\/p>\n
Walks Around Enniskerry and the Glencree Valley is written by Kevin Warner with assistance from Jenny Derbyshire, Yanny Petters, Carl Strickland, Eddie Swaine and Joe Wilson. It is available in Village Store and Nature in Enniskerry and Bridge Street books in Wicklow town. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niall Lenoach and Noel Barry, from Enniskerry, became involved in a dispute with a local landowner who restricted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60,10687],"class_list":["post-90022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tom-galvin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}