Right of way?

bofarr01

Greetings all,
Just wondering how I can look up existing rights of way in a particular area? Presumably the local authority would have this info but how accessiable is it?

Reason I ask is that a lane near me which appears to be a public right of way has been blocked by a local landowner using a gate. Before I storm the gate full of righteous indignation, I'd like to know if the right of way exists!

Cheers,
B

murphaph

Looks like the local council deals with rights of way. Here's my local council's page on applying to have a right of way extinguished. Presumably your local landowner would have had to do this if a rght of way existed. Anyway, just call your council and ask them. Hope you get a result, some people are very cheeky when it comes to rights of way.

Edit:
From Oasis

Right of way

There is a distinction in Irish law between public and private rights of way. A public right of way is a person's right of passage along a road or path, even if the road or path is not in public ownership. A private right of way is the right to enter onto private lands, but only for the purposes of gaining access to or exiting from another piece of land.

The rights of walkers and ramblers are specified in the Occupiers' Liability Act 1995, which includes "recreational user" as a category of users of privately-owned lands. Under the Act, a recreational user is a person present on the premises or land of a private citizen, without charge (other than a reasonable charge for parking facilities) for the purposes of engaging in a recreational activity. Under these circumstances, the owner of the land is obliged only to not intentionally injure or harm the recreational user or act with reckless disregard for the recreational user's welfare. This is an important distinction because it removes previous insurance liability concerns, which still apply to an invited visitor onto private land.
Extinguishing public rights of way

Under the Roads Act 1993, it is the responsibility of local authorities around Ireland to protect the public's right to access public rights of way in each local authority area.

However, under the Planning and Development Act 2000, the owner of private land can apply to his or her local authority to have the public right of way removed from a part of his of her land. Typically, this would occur if the owner wished to develop his or her property in a way that would affect access to it by the public. In these circumstances, the local authority has the power to recover the costs involved with closing a part of land off from public access from the landowner.

Before a public right of way can be removed, the local authority is required to place a notice on the land detailing the proposed extinguishment of the right of way and must also place advertisements in local newspapers publicising the proposed change for at least 14 days. Both the notice and the advertisements must give details of where and when the proposed changes will take place and give leave for citizens to appeal the extinguishment in writing. The local authority may choose to give a person opposing the change an oral hearing. The local authority reserves the right of judgement over appeals to extinguishments of public rights of way, however, it must publish the decision to extinguish the public right of way as soon as it has been decided to do so and must also inform any persons who objected in writing to notify them of the its decision.

MorningStar

First things first, check a map. A regular one will do and then get OS map. It should be clear. It is common practice to close of public land/access to claim ownership at a later date.

Alun

There's also a document on the MCI's website explaining (if you're fluent in legalistic gobbledeygook, that is) the matter too.

http://www.mountaineering.ie/mci/access/Private&PublicRightsofWay.doc

Victor

Probably the best test is "Have the public been using this route over the last year?"

MorningStar wrote:

First things first, check a map. A regular one will do and then get OS map. It should be clear. It is common practice to close of public land/access to claim ownership at a later date.

While an indicator, OSI specificly state their maps do not indicate right of way.

silverside

victor that would give an indication but i believe rights of way once established don't fade away (and have to explicitly be extinguished)

on the other hand regular use doesn't always establish a right of way (e.g. i heard they close the phoenix park one day a year to ensure a right of way doesnt become enshrined)

also rights of way arent always noted somewhere unless someone tries to block them off

this is all based on hearsay but its an interesting point, in UK you have various classes of paths (bridleways, public paths etc etc) which mean bikers/riders can access loads of private land, in Scotland it goes one better with "right to roam", in Ireland it can be very restrictive if the landowners want it to be (e.g. old head of kinsale, and sligo hills). I would love to see right to roam adopted in ireland but the farming/landowner lobby is very powerful and we have the tr*veller problem too which muddies the waters.

shazzglazz

A Public right of way exisits when it is been used by people on a daily basis for more than one year. But now you have an extinigushed right of way, you must see if the proper procuders where followed to extiniguish it. look up the roads act and the section on this.

-Chris-

Hi Shazzglazz,

I've locked this thread as it's over 4 years old.

Please read the Charter and don't bump old threads, Feel free to start a new thread if you wish to discuss this further.

Thanks,

Chris