Mourne farmers 'couldn’t be bribed in government's last failed attempt to impose unwanted National Park'

TUV councillor Harold McKee, who is deputy leader of the Mournes Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Resident Action Group, said he had read with interest an article in the Farming Life entitled ‘A National Park’.

The article followed an announcement by the Finance Minister that the James Hutton Institute has been appointed to undertake research on the long-term future of the Mourne Mountains.

"A proposed national park in the Mournes dates back to 2002 when the Environment and Heritage Service commissioned a study of the protentional benefits of establishing one or more NPs in Northern Ireland,” Cllr McKee said.

“The Mournes National Park Working Group was established by the Department of the Environment in 2004 to commission research on the Mournes NP and its boundary.

“With strong opposition to a NP in the Mournes from farmers, landowners, quarry owners, rural business owners etc, the Mournes Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Resident Action Group (MAONBRAG) was formed in 2007.”

He added: “Who can say the Mournes needs protected and managed whenever the farmers are the custodians of the land who do this every day as they farm the land.”

Cllr Mckee said allowing the Mournes to be turned into a National Park would be ‘failing' the forefathers who protected the land for hundreds of years.

"If the last failed attempt by government to impose a NP on the farmers and landowners of Mourne is anything to go by, they couldn’t be bribed into taking money for an unwanted NP because arable and livestock farming was top of their priorities on both low and high land, not turning it into a recreation area,” he ended.