Lissadell House owners v Sligo Co Co

I'm not upset at all - I simply refer you to the case of substance in this matter - that of the High Court. Read this report by RTE, hardly anti establishment.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1220/295752-lisadell/

That is not what happened. For a long time The owner was a ward of court who couldn't have consented to trespassing.

Stop making up lies. Even the High Court found the right of way was only during certain hours,, so it just shows how poor the judgement in the High Court was.

overturned is overturned. the high court made its decision on the wrong basis. courts of law are meant to uphold the law.

PO.

The case is dead now, the current owners won and it can't be appealed further afaik.

The great pity is that it'll be used as a precedent in the grey and contentious matter of public rights of way around the state. We had/ perhaps still have a different way of looking at these matters in Ireland. Many landowners were happy to have the public crossing their land at times, once people respected it and caused no damage. This is still most evident in summer when river banks and beaches are visited by local communities, often on or accessed across private lands. This was how we did it without the need for the legislation found in say England or across other European states.

Here we had such a case of attested long standing public use and recognised as such in the High Court. The day these barristers had that overturned was a bad days work in terms of the public good. And that's what matters. They did no service to the state or the public good.

And so primary legislation is now needed to address this and regularise it and we may expect opposition from the big land owner lobbies. There was talk from some parties after the above case on this matter but things turn slowly it seems. Maybe it'll be part of some constitutional reform package as regards private property rights in general, as for varied reasons many believe these are too heavily weighted towards property owners. Understandably in the 1937 document perhaps due to our history, but times and needs change.

There was, maybe still is a long running case over a claimed right of way in Wicklow, Enniskerry I think. I've lost track of it, last I heard another appeal.

In the Lissadell case Sligo County Council got involved, to their credit. Local authorities have on the whole been very, very tardy before this with listing & defending public right of ways that are not county roads. This case sent a further chill across the matter as far as I've heard, so it was a bad day for the plain people of Ireland.

As you will know, there are private rights of way and public rights of way. Private rights of way have the subject of debate and new legislation in recent years in an attempt to tidy up the records of same and have them registered. Public rights of way are a different kettle of fish. The vast majority of public rights of way are the 'county roads' as defined by local authorities. Local authorities were asked a number of years ago to identify and list other public rights of way in their development plans: success of this may be exampled by Wicklow CoCos efforts https://data.gov.ie/dataset/public-rights-of-way-cdp2016-2022 - a mere handful in an entire county.

My understanding of the situation is that it was thought that as in the Lissadell case, that continuous public use in living memory would be enough to establish that a particular route was a public rights of way. This is what went before the High Court and the court agreed that this was a reasonable definition.

Our barrister friends appealed and established that no, continuous public use in living memory was not enough and that the landowner must have made a deed or some some other legal instrument that clearly stated such and such a route is dedicated as a public right of way.

As I pointed out above, this is completely contrary to the general practice of agreed access over generations. That is why this case was a bad day for the plain people of Ireland and why I've heard it has stalled (sent a chill) across other local authorities who might attempt to list and declare such public rights.

They did no service to the citizens of this state and this is why personally I hold them responsible and would not go near the place.

A few grand wouldn't have paid for the photocopying in that case.