Can Cape Clear survive? West Cork island school enrols just four children

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

Cape clear is dying, person by person, year by year, slowly but very definitely, dying.
So opens the late Bill O'Herlihy's particularly doom-laden episode of RTE's current affairs series 7 Days about the future of the West Cork island.
At the time it was aired 55 years ago, there were 197 people living there.
With a woman having died just a week before he and his crew arrived on the island, the community were described as 'battling for survival'.
What was noted was the decline in the population, from more than 600 in 1900 to less than 200 when the documentary was made in 1970.
'There are those who claim it will die in their lifetime, that it will be uninhabited, like the Blasket [islands] in 20 years,' O'Herlihy reported. 'The national school emphasises the island's decline today."
He pointed out the school had just 31 children enrolled, drastically down from 150 in the 1950s at separate schools for boys and girls.
Fast forward to today, and while the island hasn't died and is not uninhabited, it is yet again at a crossroads.
This is because the number of children enrolled in Scoil Náisiúnta Inis Chléire for the coming school year is just four. Added to that, it has a housing crisis — there aren't enough homes for people to rent or buy if they chose to live on the island.
There is a genuine fear that if the school numbers fall even lower, it could undermine the viability of Ireland's southernmost Gaeltacht island primary school and raise serious questions about the future of the island itself.
Indeed, a number of islanders bemoan the fact that it is a long time since they heard the joyous shrieks, shouts, and laughter of children echoing around the undulating hills and boreens that sprawl across the 4km-long Island.
Cecilia Uí Dhrisceoil came to Cape Clear from Dublin to attend an Irish course on the island in the 1970s. She was a trainee teacher at the time. When she qualified, she returned to the island to teach.
Asked what she thought of the 7 Days episode on Cape Clear on RTÉ, she was unimpressed.
'I was on the island around that time, and I remember that documentary,' Scoil Náisiúnta Inis Chléire's former principal said.
It was very dark, very dismal, and very negative and I just said in my own head that 'I hope he is wrong because I'm here for the long haul'.
'He was wrong. Reports exaggerating the island's death are usually by people who are not particularly fond of the island and maybe have other interests outside.'
On the situation with the school, she said: 'The school is going through a lean period but it also went through a lean period in my day.
'We managed to get a family from Liverpool who wanted to attend an Irish-speaking school for a year or two and to this day, they come here every Easter holiday."
She referenced other families who have come and sent their children to Cape Clear's school, including a woman who worked as a nurse on the island and a family from Cavan, who came in the 1990s and still live there.
Comharchumann Chléire Teoranta bainisteoir Kevin McCann, who runs the island's co-op, came with four children and the family now has eight children, and they ensured the survival of the school in their own day.
Contradicting anybody who says the island is in a crisis because of the low numbers enrolled in the school, Cecilia adds with a confident nod: 'All you need is one family to change everything.'
Currently, Karina Zimmerman's school-age children make up three of the four children enrolled to start in the next school year.
Karina Zimmerman at the main office for last weekend's Lavender Festival on Cape Clear. Her three children are enrolled to attend the island's school in the next school year. Picture: Neil Michael
The fourth is the four-year-old daughter of Cotter's Bar landlady, Róisín Ní Chonaill, but she is concerned at the "dynamic" of her daughter being in a school made up entirely of another family's children.
Saorlaith-Ré has been enrolled to start in September, and it is understood that in another two or three years, her other daughter, Caoilfhionn, may also be schooled on the island.
Karina, who is expecting another child, arrived on the island in October 2019.
Originally from Germany, the self employed businesswoman and her husband Andreas, who is a chimney sweep and a handyman, 'just came to look' at what the island had to offer her family.
As well as deciding to stay, they also changed their mind about home-schooling their children.
An issue with the school, which she did not divulge, led to her taking her children out for a time but they are now back. If another issue arose in the coming school year, would she be tempted to do the same again and pull her children from the school?
'It would really depend on, like, if it's changeable or not. I mean, we always go in to talk first and we try to negotiate.
'But if there was something that we're really, really not at all happy with or the children, then I'm sorry, I take the kids out.
'[They are] my highest priority. It's nice that it's going hand in hand at the moment, that the children can have that, and it helps the school. But if I have to decide between family and school, it will always be family.'
Recalling the time she did take her children out of the school, she said: 'When this happened, people came to us, and then they [told us] 'now the school can get into trouble'.
'[It was like] we let the school down but no, we [didn't] let the school down. It's just for me, my kids are more important than school.
'So as long as helping the school goes together with helping my own children, I'm fine."
Róisín Ní Chonaill, who admits being fixated with living on an island from an early age, first started coming to Cape Clear about seven years ago.
Cotters Bar landlady Róisín Ní Chonaill with her daughters, two-year-old Caoilfhionn and four-year-old Saorlaith-Ré. Picture: Neil Michael
The 26-year-old worked in Seán Rua's Seafood Restaurant and An Siopa Beag, run by Neil O'Regan at the North Harbour, a short walk from where ferries dock.
After a year at art college on the mainland, she returned to the island to live after she became pregnant with Saorlaith-Ré.
She has lived on the island ever since.
'When I was about 17, I had put in my then year book — in answer to the question where would I be in five or six years — that I would be living on an island,' she said.
'It's something I have always wanted to do. When I got here, there was, like, some sort of ancestral thing in me, something to do with the land and the sea and the history of it, the heritage and the Irish.
"I'd be quite good at Irish. I loved Irish in school."
She is a little torn about Saorlaith-Ré going to the school in September as the numbers are so small.
'What's best for her?' she asks aloud. 'She's very social. She has the social aspect from being in the pub. She's self confident.
Even if there was one more family, I'd be happy. That's because of the numbers and a different dynamic.
As far as life on the island is concerned, she says it is not as like any other part of rural Ireland as some might think. 'It's actually less like rural Ireland, I would say,' she said.
'You could be a lot more isolated in the back arse of Mayo where there's no houses for miles and miles.
'Here, you've got somebody at every kind of corner or you see the same people every day.'
She said that when she returned to the island with Saorlaith-Ré when she was three months old, she felt 'held' by the rest of the community, who gathered around and were keen to help her if she ever needed help.
'I was a young new mom moving out here completely in the middle of winter but I felt really kind of like, I suppose, held by the community. People were making sure I was getting the shopping and all that kind of stuff.
'From a community point of view, there's a definite kind of holding, which is something that's quite rare within the kind of pace of life that we're living in.
'I think it's really special to just find somewhere that is very authentic, like the reality of having to get over things when they happen, and get on with things.
'I think there's a real kind of rawness to that you don't find in modern life as much.'
While Mr McCann's role is to help steer through what he describes as a "collaborative process' to find at least one house in the community for a teacher, it is a 'dry run' for a bigger objective.
He is one of the many on the island who believe one of the main things at the core of the island's woes is the lack of affordable housing to either buy or rent.
The father-of-eight routinely plays in seisiúin in the island's North Harbour club with Cape Clear Island Distillery founder and manager Seamus Ó Drisceoil.
Comharchumann Chléire Teoranta bainisteoir Kevin McCann, who runs the island's co-op, at his offices at Cape Clear's North Harbour. Picture: Neil Michael
The two men are among a number of islanders behind a variety of initiatives and businesses.
What the island wants to do is build houses that the co-op would retain ownership of, and rent out for essential workers or young families.
The dilemma for the island is around building and selling affordable housing for people to attract them to the island but who might just buy it and then move away but rent it out as a holiday-let.
'There's a risk that people will come and we'd just be repeating the same mistakes,' he said.
'The house could just end up becoming a holiday home and people would move away, and we'd be back to square one.
'We're talking about a retained ownership housing scheme to help people pay affordable rent in a bid to encourage them to come here and live.'
Brennus Voarino, who arrived on the island with his parents from his native France as a teenager in 2010, farms a herd of distinctive belted galloway cattle on the Fastnet Farm he owns and runs with partner Samantha Parsons.
A member of the school committee, he is not unduly alarmed about the low school numbers.
'I feel quite positive about the school, ' he said.
I think we're in a good position. It could be better but we've gone through more difficult times and we've always pulled through.
'So I think we will pull through again.'
However, he feels that a more 'urgent' need is to attract younger families to 'keep the young population going'.
He believes in a system of so-called gateway housing, whereby a family can be encouraged to come and live on the island in a low rental property for a set number of years as they save to buy land and build their own home on the island. After a set period of time, they would be expected to leave the gateway housing accommodation to make way for another young family.
'It can be a regular house but you choose who comes in,' he said, suggesting that families with school-age children could be more of a priority than others.
'Maybe families that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford buying a house on the island,' he said.
'They could come in and maybe live here while their kids are in school and maybe then, over that time, they find a piece of land they can buy.'
While there is a shortage of available housing, there is no shortage of funds available for the island. More than €240,000 is, for example, to be spent on a new playground at the North Harbour.
The tender for the project, which is almost entirely funded by the department of social protection, closed earlier this year.
There is also a €35,000-a-year tourist manager job up for grabs to manage the Cape Clear Fastnet Experience and Heritage Centre.
Built to replace an existing heritage centre on the island, it received €1m from Fáilte Ireland and Údarás na Gaeltachta last year. This will, when it opens, help the island operate as a 'last stop' gateway destination for tourists keen to visit the Fastnet lighthouse 6.5km southwest of Cape Clear.
Farmer Brennus Voarino with some of his pedigree herd of Belted Galloway cattle. He is eager to see more young families on the island. Picture: Neil Michael.
While the co-op does appear to be behind most things on the island, it is not the only entity operating for those living there.
Local businesswoman Mary O'Driscoll, who runs a holiday cottage business and two of the island's three pubs with husband Ciarán, was recently involved in bringing a mini methane gas plant to the island.
She helps run the voluntary group and charity, Tograí Chléire, which secured grant funding to bring onto the island the west Cork-made MyGug anaerobic digester system that — in effect — turns food waste into methane.
Although only a pilot project at the moment which sees the gas being used for cooking in a small number of homes on Cape Clear, the plan is to extend it throughout the island.
Tograí Chléire is also behind plans to revive what is known as the Cape Clear Gansey, or Geansaí Chléire, which was specially knit more than a century ago over a period of months from a highly detailed, dense, and durable yarn for fishermen.
While the history of the jumper is currently being researched, the island could one day be a base for them to be produced.
However, in the meantime, Údarás — which sources millions in taxpayers' money for projects on the island — is not without its critics.
Those critics question the use of so much money to fund businesses and related opportunities on an island struggling to provide housing for people who want to work there. A spokesperson said in response:
Investment has been strategically focused on developing sustainable economic opportunities that align with our mandate to promote economic development in Gaeltacht areas. Housing provision is the responsibility of local authorities and the department of housing, local government and heritage.
But they said the Board of Údarás na Gaeltachta is doing what it can to help 'facilitate' housing.
These include a comprehensive property review of Údarás na Gaeltachta's approximate 1,000-hectares estate to 'identify suitable sites to make available for housing for Irish speakers under existing Government schemes'.
In addition, a committee of local authorities with Gaeltacht areas is identifying collaborative approaches to housing provision in Gaeltacht areas.
The body is also funding a three-year position at Mayo County Council to coordinate the Vacant Property Scheme on behalf of Gaeltacht areas across all counties.
One islander has other issues, not least having his own death exaggerated.
Retired blind goat herder, Ed Harper, now 76, first came to the island from England in 1973 and has been farming goats on the island since 1979.
Now largely house-bound, he was rumoured to have died earlier this year.
'I heard this rumour too,' he says. 'I can't remember where I heard it from, but it was very recent.
'I've got old, my balance has got bad and every bit that can ache does ache from time to time.
'Essentially, I've farmed for 45 years. Now I do bits and pieces, but very little or very seldom.
'That's where the rumour came from, and people hadn't seen me for a while.'
Retired goat herder Ed Harper at his home on Caper Clear, from where he is happy to say that reports of his death have been 'greatly exagerated.' Picture: Neil Michael
As far as the island dying, he is about as sanguine about that particular rumour as he is about reports of his own demise.
'It probably is dying but the fact of the matter is, Cape Clear has been dying since I first came here in 1973,' he said.
'It is taking a very long time to do it and it probably still will take quite a long time to do it.
'There's less farms than there used to be, and there are a lot less people, and a lot less working people.'
As far as the school situation is concerned, he says that in recent years the numbers of children enrolled in it have been 'scraping along the bottom'.
'Four kids is relatively healthy, right, in terms of what has been,' he said.
'But does that mean the island is dying? I think it all depends on what people mean by Cape Clear 'dying'.
'I don't think that it will ever be a classic empty island with, you know, people just coming over on their own boats to admire the ruined houses.
It might become an island of basically retired and hobby people from elsewhere, or it might become a place alongside maybe three, four or five large farms.
He dismisses the lack of lots of children running and jumping around the school yard to shrieks of laughter echoing around the island as a 'romantic notion'.
Ed says he hasn't heard that sound since his own eldest son — now in his 40s — was schooled on the island at a time when there were around 20 children in the school.
He also dismisses as 'another myth' the idea that without lots of children in the school, the island's viability is threatened.
'Almost certainly the majority of our children, like the majority of all children born on the island, will not stay here,' he said.
'I mean, if you were to go to Baltimore and ask, how many of the children of Baltimore are still living in Baltimore, it wouldn't be many.
'People however, draw this distinction with Cape Clear because there's a ferry and there is the sea.
'You don't need to keep children. What you need to do is attract somebody else's children. You need to keep attracting lots of people in.
'As far as I'm concerned, reports of my own demise — and the island — have also been exaggerated."
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