Ireland’s right to roam
Sir, – I wish to add my voice to the call for a renewed focus on the right to roam in these pages. The frustration of the public interest by a small number of landowners provides a neat illustration of Mancur Olson’s (1965) theory of collective action, which offers a useful guide to much of our democratic politics.
In practice, our laws and institutions often respond not to the number of people who hold a preference, but to the intensity with which that preference is held. Here, a highly motivated minority of landowners exerts outsized influence because their benefit is concentrated, while the benefits of access to the countryside are highly diffuse.
As a result, it is far easier for the few to organise and preserve the status quo, to the detriment of the obvious public interest.
I suspect a clear majority of citizens would support the introduction of reasonable right to roam legislation in Ireland. Yet that majority will always struggle to overcome the barriers to collective action and to give political expression to this latent preference.
This is precisely where enlightened political leadership must intervene to correct for this tragic imbalance: to aggregate, articulate and legislate for the common good – before our right of access is eroded any further. – Yours, etc,
SHANE BYRNE,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.