DEAR EDITOR

Vincent Roddy (Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association) references the Fianna Fáil party constitution as one reason why families, not national park land for red deer, should have priority in sales of land in Ireland.

If one reads Bunreacht na hÉireann, one has to reach the conclusion that the State buying a hill farm of 70ha or more – where there is a potential family buyer – is actually unconstitutional. The constitution “guarantees to protect the family” and also sets an objective that there shall “be established on the land in economic security as many families as in the circumstances shall be practical” .

A 70ha hill farmed organically with single farm payments and areas of natural constraint (ANC) payments is a viable starter unit for any of the hundreds of young girls and boys with green certs looking to farm and rear a family in the depopulated west of Ireland.

It would be as good a starter unit as those provided to families in Ráth Cairn in 1935 with great success. The irony is mixed grazing of such land does more for biodiversity of fauna and flora than buying it to abandon to red deer and rhododendron as the National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) and An Taisce does with much of their lands.

National parks are an excellent idea but a living, populated, grazed national park – as exists in Cumbria – being farmed for the environment is more valuable to our people than empty sterile highlands as in Scotland.