Cork Coasts: Gateway housing is a Clear game-changer

“EVERY season has something unique to offer – you’re coming into the spring of the year, there’s new growth, the days are getting longer. In the summer, the island is a hive of activity. You go into autumn and it’s nice to kick down a gear after a hectic summer, you have the bird watching season and so on. Christmas is a lovely time of year to be on Cape Clear but January and February can be like anywhere with storms and what-not! We appreciate the summer all the more because of it.”

So said Niamh Ní Dhrisceoil, a skipper for many summers of a ferry that brings people to and from Oileán Cléire/Cape Clear, Cork’s only Gaeltacht island community, and a science teacher in Ballincollig’s Coláiste and Gaelcholáiste Choilm, while speaking to The Echo.

The teacher has stepped back from the ferry skipper role for the time being as her teaching responsibilities have increased but she’s back and forth to the island every weekend during term time and spends the entire summer on the island. She can be occasionally called up for duty to substitute for ferry colleagues who may be off ill or on holidays.

Island life is challenging but it’s clear that Niamh is up for that – she’s been involved in the local Gaeltacht co-operative for almost 20 years. Comharchumann Cléire Teo is, for all intents and purposes, the island’s governing body – it has started a number of local businesses and runs the Irish Summer college on the island and, when it comes to representing the views of islanders, it’s the voice of the island on shore and internationally.

It was for her role in the Comharchumann that Niamh was recently awarded the runner up award in the social enterprise category of the Image Magazine Business Woman of the of the Year awards and she was also nominated for the Leadership Trailblazer of the Year award at the Women of Vision Awards in May.

For Niamh this is a vindication that islanders can stand toe to toe with people on ‘the mainland’ notwithstanding or maybe even because of the challenges they face.

“There are far more advantages than there are disadvantages and when you think about it, very often people think that coming from an island that it would hold you back or that it would be a disadvantage to you in some way.

“But I was in a room last month with nearly a thousand people, business women of the highest calibre, extremely successful, and I came from an island with a population of around 130 people, one of many, and it certainly hasn’t held me back at all.”

Niamh’s Comharchumann role has involved being to the forefront of a number of campaigns – including a project to build a number of houses on the island which would be aimed at attracting families with young children to come and live there and, most importantly, be educated in the local school. She is also a brand ambassador for 3Sq Miles Gin.

The Cape Clear Distillery, which makes 3Sq Mile, is one of a number of initiatives to boost life and business on the island. Another is a very successful G-tech remote working facility which provides desks and superfast broadband – this was developed by the Comharchumann in partnership with the Gaeltacht development authority, Údarás na Gaeltachta.

The Comharchumann is also involved in a housing venture, to ensure that they can provide homes for families who come to the island.

This is vital to ensure that the local school, which is at the heart of the community, stays open and continues to provide education on the island.

The plan to build the houses was hatched during covid when Niamh was able to spend 11 and a half weeks on the island in one block. “We did a lot of work in the background, we purchased the site that’s only about 200 – 300 metres from the local national school with the intention of developing a gateway housing initiative, it would have been our flagship project.

“It would be a game-changer not just for Cape Clear but for all the islands of Ireland.

“The idea at the back of the model is that we would have looked at studies on the Scottish islands who would have done a similar project.

“We’ve taken their ideas but we’ve refined it to better suit our context and, in Scotland, not only did they stop population decline but they reversed it.

“We’re hoping the gateway housing will attract people in, families in particular with children who will attend the primary school.

“We found over the years that there’s no scarcity of people who want to come to the island but there’s a huge scarcity of housing accommodation for them.

“We’ve lost countless families in the last ten/fifteen years because of it.”

Niamh explained that families could come for a year to try out island life – parents have taken career breaks, kids have attended school and enhanced their Irish; and though work circumstances may not have allowed them to move permanently to the island, they still have a very strong connection to it and return on a very regular basis.

“Even those children who are now adults are returning on a regular basis as well,” she said.

“We have other families who would initially have come for a year but have remained on but ultimately would have wanted to build on the island.”

They undertook their gateway housing project in order to have autonomy as they seek to keep the community life on the island as vibrant as ever and to avoid the possibility of the island being blighted by holiday homes which would be empty most of the year.

“At least we have autonomy of the houses – if a family comes for a year and decides to move on, the houses are still owned by the island and available for another family.

“We won’t face the issue that we have an island full of holiday homes and locked up and not available to rent or, indeed, may not be suitable for winter inhabitation.”

A recent survey carried out by Údarás na Gaeltachta found that there were far more holiday homes in some coastal Gaeltacht areas than there were homes for all-year residency.

“The other thing about it is that the houses that are going on sale the prices are beyond reach of any local or islander – the last three properties that went on sale were sold off the internet without anyone coming to view the property,” said Niamh.

Last year they encountered an issue with a gateway housing project which would have seen four new houses being built on the island. “We put in for planning to build four houses initially and we were going to do this independently,” she said.

“We were advised to remove our application 24 hours before it was due to be deliberated on because we fell between two policies – so local policy is in favour of cluster housing, national policy is also in favour of cluster housing but only within a certain limit of a town or village and the issue there is that there are no towns or villages on the island.”

This policy is anchored, of course, in a mainland understanding of community life because although there’s no town or village on the island, it is nonetheless a vibrant community.

While this is a setback, it hasn’t halted the project in the sense that the Comharchumann is in discussions with local councillors and the county council to see what can be done.

“To get the planning over the line, we’re falling between a rock and a hard place and that would a common trait on all islands.

“We’re working really, really hard and we’re facing the exact same challenges as our mainland counterparts but these challenges are exacerbated because of the nine miles of salt water that separates the two,” she said, mentioning for instance the higher cost to bring building materials on to the island or the greater difficulty in getting tradespeople over as other difficulties, apart from policy matters, which they face.

“Policies that are tailored for mainland living impede progress because they’re ill-suited to an island context thus hindering effective solutions like the one we proposed – think square pegs to round holes.”

This is the missing piece in the jigsaw as far as Niamh is concerned and the issue she highlighted about the different contexts for island and mainland life are, for instance, mentioned in the Housing Commission Report published in May which urged the provision of dedicated supports to island and Gaeltacht communities to ensure their long term viability.

“Everything we’ve been doing, working concurrently with the various projects, a rising tide floats all boats, and once we rectify the housing issue, everything else will pay dividends.

“If we get our gateway housing, it will be a game-changer, not just for us but it could be a model adapted by all of Ireland’s islands.”