Behind the News: Simon Murray, islander

Some Irish islands face cuts in their services. One resident of Inishbofin says it might destroy their communities


'Do you want to be responsible for the depopulation of one more island?" Simon Murray, of the community-development programme on Inishbofin, asked members of the Oireachtas this week.

Murray, a native of the Co Galway island, says he wants people to understand the emotional fallout of depopulation and to stop it happening to seven islands under threat of losing core funding for their community-development offices. A new scheme will see money allocated by population, which will disadvantage islands such as Inishturk, Dursey, Whiddy and Inishbofin.

“I hope, at this stage in our lives, a historical perspective should arouse guilt to prevent this from happening,” says Murray. His parents met when his mother was a teacher on Inishshark island – depopulated since the 1960s. His partner’s father comes from Turbot Island, which was depopulated in 1978.

“I was born and reared on this island. My child goes to the local school. My father is buried in the graveyard. Everything that I am is Inishbofin. I don’t want that to fall apart on my watch.”

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The group of non-Gaeltacht islands seeks the continuity of a funding stream aimed at island community-development programmes. “It’s back to basics. We want a return to the programmes that were in place from 1994 to 2009. We want to be able to give people three- to five-year contracts, so we can keep the ‘flock memory’ of our programmes. We have suffered 25 per cent cuts to core funding in five years.”

The current group of non-Gaeltacht islands is served by the offices of five community-development companies, managed by local voluntary committees. They receive about €600,000 a year to employ staff to deliver a range of services across the nine islands.

Murray says that the community-development office is the first point of contact for both locals and visitors on Inishbofin. “It’s a one-stop shop. We run playgroups, groups for young people and the elderly. We run education and training programmes. We help people deal with their personal finances, fill out forms for agricultural schemes, the Department of Health and Social Welfare. We even sought infrastructural funds following the storms earlier this year.”

Murray says that the seven coastal islands are also net contributors to the Department of Finance from tourism. “Eighty per cent of our tourists are from the domestic market, so there are a lot of people this will affect,” says Murray.

The funding changes are part of local-government reform. A social-inclusion and community-activation programme is due to replace community-development programmes nationally; each county will pay a company to manage all community-development projects. “It’s a model that simply doesn’t fit the islands,” says Murray.