ICMSA query Minister’s description of existing trespass laws as “robust”

The President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, has queried the description of the existing laws on trespass as “robust” given by Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan.  Mr. Drennan said that whether the problem lay in the laws themselves or their application, it was manifestly obvious from cases and recent reports from, particularly, Tipperary that cases of trespass involving threats and intimidation were still frequent and unresolved.   Mr. Drennan said he had no doubt that Minister O’Callaghan genuinely thought that the laws were sufficient to the challenge. But he said that matters looked very different when viewed from the standpoint of a farmer repeatedly having to confront very often the same group of intimidating individuals deliberately trespassing to hunt illegally.

“Advising farmers to consider a civil remedy in these kinds of cases is just delusional. There will be no response from the trespassers and the idea that these groups will enter voluntarily into a process of civil litigation is, I’m afraid to say, entirely naïve. The only way we can deal with this kind of repeated illegal trespassing is for the State to draft laws that squarely address the offense and then instruct the Gardai to energetically enforce those laws.  We know there’s a problem in Tipperary at present because our farmer members tell us that there is. We know that there was an endemic problem in parts of Limerick and North Cork, and we know that following a sustained campaign by ICMSA and a much more co-ordinated response by local Gardai that that problem seems to have receded somewhat. So the problems being experienced in Tipperary are either a question of a local policing strategy or the existence of a real gap in existing legislation and – it’s well worth noting – that the gardai have stated on numerous occasions that the legislation is not sufficiently robust and needs to be updated”, he continued.

“We are not lawyers but in either case – whether a gap in the law or application of existing laws – it’s squarely a matter for Minister O’Callaghan and I’m afraid just waving the problem away in this fashion isn’t going to do. We acknowledge the success of ‘Operation Thor’ but it is important to differentiate between the rural burglaries that this strategy was formulated to address and the ongoing lower-level problem of trespass for illegal hunting and accompanied by intimidation and threats of violence against the landowning farmers. The miscreants might often be the same groups, but the offences are subtly different, ICMSA is much more inclined to agree with the Gardai here and we believe that the legislation needs to be strengthened. We are asking the Minister to look again at the legislation as a matter of priority.”, concluded the ICMSA President.

Ends     11 November 2026

Denis Drennan
President, ICMSA

Or

Cathal MacCarthy
ICMSA Press Office