It will soon be possible to study for a university degree in remote Cahirciveen on the Ring of Kerry, writes Anne Lucey.
The first outreach degree programme of the English department in University College Cork (UCC) was announced at the weekend by Prof Gerard Wrixon, the college's president.
Members of the English department at UCC, representatives of the Kerry Education Service and community groups in Caherciveen, 100 miles from the Cork campus, were present.
Adult education officers in the county had been lobbying the college for such a degree programme for 20 years, and the four-year arts degree would hopefully be the first of many different outreach degree programmes for adults, speakers said.
While the educational attainment of today's young people was very high, the situation was very different in the case of older groups, Prof Wrixon said.
Of those aged 35-44, just slightly more than half had completed second-level education, and only one-fifth had completed third-level.
"The advent of courses like this will hopefully help to address this imbalance and make lifelong learning a real possibility in places as beautiful but as remote as this here in Caherciveen."
The course, at the O'Connell Centre of Further Education, was being launched just yards from where Daniel O'Connell was born in 1776, Prof Wrixon said.
"O' Connell had a deep lifelong attachment to this district. A great statesman who believed in the power of ordinary people, he knew that in order to exercise that power education was essential," he said.