SOME EIGHT decades after Alcock and Brown landed on bog near the north Connemara town, regular flights may begin between Clifden and Inishbofin next year.
“This has been a long time coming – 20 years, in fact,” Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív said in Furbo, Co Galway, yesterday when he signed a €4.3 million contract for construction of an airstrip at Clifden.
Work on Inishbofin’s matching strip is already well under way, at a cost of more than €2 million, and both projects are expected to be completed by December.
The Clifden-Inishbofin airport project has had a chequered history, with first proposals for a site on the northwest corner of Roundstone bog abandoned in the 1980s in response to serious environmental concerns.
Plans for a new site were approved by Galway County Council in 1999, and the decision was upheld on appeal to An Bord Pleanála seven years ago.
The appeals board granted permission for the airstrip in line with Government policy to promote new links with the offshore islands, but rejected plans for a terminal building and associated car parking. The board noted that the site, some 10km north of Clifden at Cloonlaghtanabba, lay outside the boundaries of a candidate Special Area of Conservation. The airstrip “would not cause undue damage to the ecology or visual amenities of the area or diminish its heritage value”.
Last year, Mr Ó Cuív sanctioned almost €500,000 for purchase of land and ancillary works from a group of businessmen involved in the Clifden and West Connemara Airport Plc. Two months later, in July, several of the shareholders were travelling on a privately-owned aircraft which crashed at Indreabhan, south Connemara, with the loss of two lives.
Inishbofin is served by 40-minute ferry journeys to and from Cleggan, and flights next year are expected to take 10 minutes. Mr Ó Cuív has said that air transport would be provided under a public service obligation. Inishbofin has a population of less than 200, which multiplies during the summer holiday season.
Mr Ó Cuív noted yesterday that air access to the Aran Islands has had a significant impact on the social and economic fabric of south Connemara, and he believed north Connemara would enjoy the same benefits. “Quite literally, the sky’s the limit,” he said.