Tourism tide goes out for Clare Island

Padraig O’Malley is in his small grocery shop and post office on Clare Island on a wonderfully balmy, sunny day – clear blue sky above him and 7km of turquoise sea separating his island from the Mayo mainland.

“It’s not getting to me,” he says of the lockdown. “My routine hasn’t changed, but I have to be careful because I’m getting stuff from the mainland. If I got [the virus] I’d have to close, and that’d affect the island.”

He is speaking by telephone from the shop, the island’s only one. Each day he takes orders over the phone, and delivers them around the island, often to over-70s neighbours living on their own.

The lockdown, which by all accounts is being well observed on the west coast island, as well as the neighbouring island of Inisturk, means the ferry from Roonagh pier near Louisburgh is bringing no one out who doesn’t live there – only food or other necessary supplies.

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With the Covid-19 outbreak the islands are easier to defend by simply shutting down access, but full-time residents are also more vulnerable should the virus break through.

“If it got to Clare Island it’d sweep around something phenomenal,” says Alan O’Grady, skipper of the Sea Sprinter, one of two ferries his family runs between Clare Island pier and Roonagh.

“That’s the thing about an island: it’s easy to keep something out, but once it gets in you’re in trouble. Big trouble. And an island is almost like a family. Everybody known everybody else intimately.”

Groceries

Shortly before he docked one day last week to take on post and a few bags of groceries from SuperValu in Westport, an Inisturk boat, the Naomh Ciaran II, crew members all wearing surgical gloves and masks, took on bags of logs but no passengers. It then scurried back to Turk, Clare Island’s smaller and less populated neighbour, both of them sitting south of Achill at the mouth of Clew Bay.

Between them the O’Grady ferries and the other ferry company, O’Malleys, bring 17,000 to 20,000 visitors, mainly day-trippers, to Clare Island every year, mostly between St Patrick’s Day or Easter, and late September/early October.

“Even those who don’t get a financial kick from the tourists get a social kick from them,” says O’Malley. “There are events organised for the summer months aimed at visitors, but which islanders also enjoy. Well, that’s not going to happen this year.”

However, he thinks the pandemic and how it has forced people to adapt could bring long-term benefits. “In many ways this shows the value, the real value, of places like the offshore islands. People can work from anywhere if there’s the right infrastructure.”

He says the Government should incentivise infrastructure provision to out-of-the-way places. Contracts should be awarded on the basis of “deliver to the periphery and then, if you do that, you can have the cherry of the cities”.

Alan O’Grady agrees. “We’re trying to get a digital hub going – well, we were before all this craziness got going – to try and create jobs. There’s a few in IT from Clare Island working on the mainland, and if we had broadband on the island, which we were promised by Mayo County Council . . .”

Orienteering

His brother Carl runs a 42-bed hostel and a tourism company Clare Island Adventures, that offers packages of accommodation plus food and activities from hiking and orienteering to Fr Ted-themed hen parties. While trying to cope with the financial implications of the crisis, he also looks to the future.

For the past two year he has serviced visits by the up-market Silverseas Cruises – 270 passengers visiting the island for a few hours of local food and some culture. The successful partnership was to grow this year into whole-day visits to include sheepdog trials, whiskey-tasting and local children performing, giving a flavour of traditional Irish culture. Passengers included many French, German and US tourists.

“That was going to happen on May 26th, but, of course, they had to cancel,” says Carl, somewhat forlorn. “They were so well received on the island before, and it was really exciting to see such a big ship come to us.”

For now Carl is turning his mind to his other venture – Clare Island Whiskey and the three alcohol-filled, recharred bourbon barrels maturing nicely for three years on board the family’s old wooden boat, the Dolphin. It’s moored in the island’s small harbour, each barrel with a piece of island bog oak inside it for added flavour.

He hopes that when ready and launched the aged-at-sea liquor will enhance the island’s can-do spirit, and dull the memory of the summer lost to coronavirus.