Two Lycra-clad cyclists pass Sinéad Mannion on the Connemara Greenway at Ballinafad, Co Galway.
She watches them drift out of view, knowing she will soon be seeing them again when they reach a 300-metre gap in the greenway and are forced to double back.
Wheelchair user Mannion is the self-proclaimed guardian of the Connemara Greenway.
The development of 15km of walking and cycling paths along the old Clifden to Galway railway line has been life-changing for her and others in this lesser-travelled part of Connemara.
RM Block
The dilapidated and largely forgotten line has been transformed into a vibrant social and tourism space where locals and visitors mingle in the shadows of the Twelve Bens.
But for Mannion and her sister Karen, the greenway holds a special significance.
In 1895, their grandfather, Peter Mannion, was employed to break boulders for the construction of the original railway line. He was just 16 at the time.
After working as a linesman for 40 years, he was the last person still employed on the track when it closed in 1935.
Over the past decade, three unconnected sections of the greenway have been developed between Clifden and Recess, with local landowners, including Karen Mannion’s husband Peter Davitt, allowing permissive access to their farms.
The further development of the greenway has been stalled for more than a year, however, with Galway County Council announcing in July last year it was seeking compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) on the remaining lands.
This process became more complex last month when farmer Oliver Joyce was granted legal permission to challenge the CPO issued by An Coimisiún Pleanála (ACP), which he says will divide his farm.
Sinéad Mannion says the greenway has widespread support among the community.
“It is very important to have accessible areas where people can walk in rural Ireland. I live outside Clifden. If I am walking on the main road I am taking my life into my own hands. So it is lovely to have the space. There are no steps, no gates. It is effortless,” she says.
“There is incredible support in the community. Everyone wants to have it done and to be able to go all the way to Clifden. That would be amazing.”
The greenway includes three completed sections between Clifden and Recess, three sections where work has started but is now stalled and five sections under CPOs.
Karen Mannion says landowners who have concerns about the further development of the greenway need to be listened to.
“People have genuine concerns. I can’t speak for that landowner [Oliver Joyce] and he is well able to speak for himself. He has his concerns and it is important that his concerns are listened to,” she says.
“Here, we were very happy to go with it [permissive access], but there is a section just ahead where the landowner wasn’t happy. Everybody has their own reasons.
“For us, as people who live here, we want to see the sections joined up over time. But we understand that people have their own anxieties.
“Everyone has a different set of circumstances and everyone is entitled to their opinion. You can’t dismiss people’s opinions. You have to listen.
“For us, it has been life-changing. I try to walk this greenway every single evening after work. We are so lucky; we are so proud of it.”
Based in Moycullen, Patrick Collins has been a member of the Connemara Greenway Alliance since it formed in 2009.
A political geography professor at University of Galway, he believes that not enough public consultation was carried out before political announcements were made about the development of the greenway.
He remembers back to the 2010s when the then Labour minister for transport was photographed on a bicycle.
“I thought, ‘That looks strange; he doesn’t look comfortable’. That was around the announcement of significant funding for the greenways, which was welcome,” he says.
“I think back to that picture of Alan Kelly on a bike, and I have seen lots of people pictured on bikes since then, and there is another perspective on that picture. And that is, ‘I own land on the old Galway to Clifden railway line, and nobody has asked me about this’.
“There lies the rub of the lack of consultation and the photo opportunism of the political machine, looking to say something positive, but forgetting about the potential impacts on the people.
“It’s not consultation; it’s not bringing people into a conversation, and that has got us into a muddle and we are 15 years dealing with that muddle.”
Mr Collins believes that the level of focus on property rights in the Constitution is holding up important developments, such as the greenway.
“I have absolute sympathy [with the greenway landowners] for the lack of consultation. I do. It is the Constitution that we have in this country, that is where the real blame lies,” he says.
He believes there is “way too much of an emphasis on private property rights”.
“We come to something that is so obviously for the social and public good, and we as a country cannot act on it because of the nature of property rights in the Irish Constitution,” he says.
“This does come down to two or three people, and those two or three people are deciding the future delivery of this [greenway], which is demanded, wanted, desired and will be used by hundreds of thousands of people.
“This requires dedicated people on the ground calling into those landowners and having those awkward conversations.
“The people who are having those conversations need to have the chequebooks and need to be able to assuage the fears of people about the breaking up of land and other issues.”
A Galway County Council spokesperson says what is known as the Connemara Greenway is two separate projects: a greenway connecting Galway to Oughterard and another connecting Oughterard and Clifden.
Asked about the level of consultation undertaken on the entire greenway, the spokesperson says meetings with landowners are continuing on the Galway to Oughterard section.
The council says it, along with consultants, met individual landowners as part of the design of the proposed greenway.
“The project team continue to meet with landowners to address concerns such as route alignment and with an overall goal to seek to minimise impacts,” the spokesperson says.
Where the purchase of land is necessary on the Galway to Oughterard section, the project team engages with “individual landowners in an effort to agree upon a route that minimises the impact on their respective farm or property holdings and will enter into voluntary land acquisition agreements where possible”, the spokesperson says.
“To ensure that the scheme can proceed in the absence of voluntary agreement for all individual plots or if there are title difficulties which cannot be resolved by an individual landowner, [the council] will include the entirety of the lands in the CPO, if required.”
