The State should buy the “magnificent” Conor Pass in Kerry and turn it into a national park. 

That’s according to Tony Lowes of Friends of the Irish Environment, following news that the pass has been put up for sale.

The Conor Pass is known the world over as one of Ireland’s most panoramic driving routes and the 1,400 acres of land has been owned by an American for decades.

The land is now on sale for €10 million - or roughly €7,000 an acre - and while Mr Lowes thinks it might be a little overvalued, he would love to see it transformed into a National Park.

“The problem is, we are thrown up with these comparisons that perhaps this 10 million should be better spent on the homeless or the health system,” he told Newstalk Breakfast. 

“I think the problem is people don’t see the value of a national park, the value of taking over an area like this.

“We’ve put in five national parks in the last 20 years of the last century and we haven’t put in one since.

“When you look at the advantages we get from one, it really is a bit difficult to understand.”

Mountain pass with twisty narrow road on the Conor Pass.

Rewilding is the popular concept in modern environmentalism of returning land to a more natural state.

Much of the land in Ireland is intensively farmed and Mr Lowes believes rewilding the Conor Pass would be hugely beneficial to nature in the area.

“There’s lakes up there as well, there’s all kinds of habitats,” he said.

“You would find that the skies would fill and the rivers would be again full of fish as they once were before.

“This is what we’re after and we can’t do that unless we manage the land properly.

“If you look at it just in climate terms, if you remove those sheep you’d have less methane emissions and you’d also have a sink because as the vegetation grows up, it absorbs greenhouse gases.”

The Conor Pass is the highest mountain pass in Ireland. It is situated on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, on the road that crosses the peninsula

Kerry TD Michael Healy Rae has said he would rather the State spent €10 million on social housing on the Dingle Peninsula.

It is, Mr Lowes believes, a shortsighted way of looking at the proposal.

“I think if you allow it to regenerate properly, you would find that birds would flock to it - including tourists,” he said.

“This is one of the things; if you look at Killarney, its tourism is based entirely on its National Park.

“It’s true of our other parks [as well].”

The listing for the Conor Pass can be viewed on Daft.ie.