Diarmaid Ferriter: From Aran air service to Star Wars, we must mind our islands

Mike Carney recorded ‘my father told them to write down that the government killed him’

Mike Carney, the oldest surviving native of the Blasket Islands, died last week in Massachusetts at the age of 94. He lived a slightly longer life than a politician with whom he crossed swords in the 1940s, Éamon de Valera, who died 40 years ago at the age of 93. The catalyst for the tension between them was a terrible tragedy; the death of Mike's brother Seán from meningitis in 1947. This marked the beginning of the end for the island's residents, who were eventually evacuated in 1953. The telephone on the island was not working and bad weather meant Seán's dead body lay for three days on his father's bed; when his body eventually reached the mainland his cause of death had yet to be officially determined, but as Mike later recorded "my father told them to write down that the government killed him."

Such anger and grief was hardly surprising; the tragedy for the Carneys was part of a much wider plight of those living on the various inhabited islands. For their way of life to be sustained they needed investment, proactive governments and a matching of the rhetoric that eulogised them as the inheritors and protectors of an ancient and valued culture, with resources to withstand the challenge of what the Kerryman newspaper in 1953 referred to as "the supremacy of the Atlantic, which dominates the lives of the Blasket Island people". It was a life described by its most famous resident, Peig Sayers, in her 1936 autobiography, as vibrant but also occasionally harrowing, when it became "this dreadful rock".

Mike Carney wrote to then Taoiseach de Valera after his brother’s death wondering why, if his government placed such a premium on the survival of the Irish language, it failed to support the way of life of those who preserved it?

This issue of support for and communication with the island communities continued to resonate in different ways in subsequent decades and it is still controversial today. In 1841, there were 211 inhabited islands with a combined population of 38,000; by 1911 this had dropped to 124 islands with a population of 24,000 and by 1991, only 64 islands were inhabited, with a total population of 9,700. By 2011, what the Department of Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht categorizes as the “main 27 inhabited offshore islands” had a population of just 2,879.

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Forty years ago, journalist Brian Wilson concluded, "islands and islanders seem to be regarded as irritants rather than assets in present-day Ireland". Undoubtedly, progress was made for the islands that remained inhabited; air travel to the Aran Islands from 1970, for example, transformed the lives of the communities there; before such flights, residents who required hospital treatment faced a 30-mile journey to Galway in a lifeboat or it could take three hours to reach the mainland by ferry.

But earlier this week, islanders once again found themselves up in arms about a refusal to listen to them after it was revealed by the Minister for the Gaeltacht Joe McHugh that Executive Helicopters was the “preferred tenderer” for the State’s public service obligation to provide flights for the Islands. If confirmed, this will mean, instead of the existing Aer Arann service, a helicopter service will operate out of Galway airport on the other side of the county, 52km away from the airport used by Aer Arran.

These developments came at the end of a summer that witnessed another protest; this one over the sole primary school on Inis Meáin, which lost its second teacher in 2012 as the number of pupils fell below Department of Education regulatory levels. There are now nine pupils enrolled, with children in every class from infants to sixth class. The protesters' spokesperson insisted, "Unless we take the necessary steps now to protect Inis Meáin's future, its people, its heritage, its language, island life will disappear as completely as it did on the Blasket Islands." A temporary solution has been achieved with Zurich Insurance agreeing to fund a second teacher, but only for a two-year period

Because of their “peripheral location and island status” it is official government policy “to support the islands’ economic and social development in an effort to overcome any disadvantages they face as island communities”.

Much has been done in recent decades to improve access and infrastructure, but the current battles of the Aran Islanders suggest that what is most important is to listen to the people who live there; they are hardly outlandish in their demands. If the Government put as much effort in to securing their welfare and future as it has in to ensuring Star Wars can be filmed on Skellig Michael, it might do justice to the memory of the Carney family.

In relation to the demise of the Blaskets as an inhabited island, Mike Carney summed up the plight succinctly: “Politicians talked a lot but talk is cheap. We needed action.”