Watch: School bag, lunch, life jacket... check! Meet the mum raising her child on one of Cork's islands

WHEN Amm McCormack who lives on Heir island is getting her little boy Finn ready for school in the morning, she has to be sure that as well as packing his lunch, he also has his little lifejacket ready to be worn on the boat crossing over to the mainland.

“When he gets over to the mainland, there is a bus ready to pick him up and take him to school, it’s fantastic,” Amm says.

The primary school on Heir Island permanently closed in 1972, and having no school on the island means that Finn, who is neurodivergent, has to make the sea crossing every morning with his dad.

He’s in a very safe pair of hands however, as Kevin, Finn’s daddy, works on the island ferry, as well as running the Heir Island Sailing School where adults and children alike can enjoy lessons in sailing, power boating, and windsurfing in a stunning environment, where they welcome people from all walks of life and all different abilities, with inclusivity being at the core of everything they do.

Depending on which way the wind is blowing, Finn makes school around 98% of the time, but occasionally the conditions are just too dangerous to cross the mere 900 metres or so of water over to nearby Cunnamore pier, and as everyone who lives near the sea knows, it is just not worth the risk to chance it.

Situated between Sherkin Island and the West and East Skeam islands, Heir Island is an earthly paradise with the purest of air coming in off the Atlantic Ocean.

“The island is a great place for Finn to grow up,” said Amm. 

He has great freedom here. We love going for walks on the beaches and around the beautiful island.

“There is no traffic to worry about. It’s a really great and safe place to bring up children, and with Finn’s additional needs, it means that there is a lot less to worry about if he suddenly did something impulsive like rush out onto the road.

“I’m really happy that my son has the chance to grow up in such a beautiful place with clean air, no pollution and no traffic.”

It took Amm a bit of getting used to island life, where she has lived with her husband Kevin since January, 2016.

It was already a big move to Ireland in 2012, never mind to a tiny island in Roaring Water Bay which is such a huge contrast to her home in Khon Kaen province in central north eastern Thailand, but it was her destiny to fall in love with an Irish guy.

Amm and Kevin married in 2007, having first met each other when Kevin was working as a teacher in Thailand. They met on internet dating and the attraction was pretty instant, they fell head over heels in love quite soon after their first date.

“ I was working in a hotel in Thailand when I first met Kevin. The first time I saw him, I thought he was an Arab man. I had no idea in my head about what an Irish guy looked like, I had never met one before.

“My family are very close and when I took Kevin to meet my parents, they thought he was a really nice guy too and that he was very kind. They were very happy when we decided to get married, because once they got to know Kevin more and more, they knew he was a good guy.”

When the couple first met, Amm had never travelled too far away from her home region, but all of that changed when she began her relationship with Kevin. He whizzed her off on the back of his motorbike to see the ocean for the very first time in Thailand, before that she had only ever been as far as Bangkok.

At that point in Amm’s life, as she experienced her first glimpse of the ocean, little did she realise how much it would eventually play such a big part of her future life. As she looked upon the glittering jewel of the sea, how could she have known then that it was her destiny to move to faraway Heir island in West Cork on the other side of the world?

When the couple moved back to Ireland they lived for a while in Dublin, but the call of the sea was in Kevin’s DNA and soon after the move they went to live in Kinsale, where Kevin’s career as a sailing and watersports instructor was going from strength to strength.

In 2016, an opportunity arose on Heir Island to run the sailing school there and that’s what prompted Kevin and Amm to make the move. Now, with eight summers under their belt, Heir Island is the place that they definitely call home.

At the start, when Amm and Kevin moved to the island, it did take a while to get used to things being different. When they were in Kinsale they could just hop in the car and head off to anywhere they needed to be, but the logistics of getting off the island were a bit different. Gradually, they adapted to the new pace of life watching the weather, and checking the tides.

Not long after they moved to Heir, Amm discovered that she was pregnant with her little boy Finn, and her plans to run the bed and breakfast there had to be cancelled.

That winter there were a lot of storms and it was pretty wild for the first six or seven weeks when the young couple came to live on the island, but despite that they remained determined to see how their adventurous move would pan out, and stuck it out in the worst of storms.

“I was a bit nervous when it came close to the time for the baby to be born, but I knew I was safe with Kevin and that he would look after me and help me. 

I also knew that there was the lifeboat in case of emergency, and everyone told me that the emergency services were great if there was any panic, so that was a huge relief.

“Somebody told us to watch for the time of the supermoon and that’s when I felt my labour was beginning. It was supposed to be have been the largest supermoon in 70 years. I kept in very close contact with the doctors by phone and they were able to advise me when it was the right time for me to leave the island and go in the car with Kevin to get to the maternity hospital in Cork.

“However, there was one point when we thought that the baby was coming, and Kevin had to pull into a garage in Clonakilty. We were lucky that we got to the hospital in Cork on time where I gave birth to our little baby boy, and Kevin was very happy that he did not have to be the midwife in the garage.”

Amm is very grateful for the power of technology, which means that her parents can see Finn growing up with regular video calls to their home in Thailand. She gets back from time to time, but of course, like the rest of the world, Covid put a stop to her travel plans to see her family for two long years.

Amm explained that in Thailand everyone loved their King number nine, Bhumibol Adulyadej who sadly passed away in October, 2016, the same year that Amm moved to Heir island.

He was referred to as King number nine as he was the ninth king of the Chakri dynasty which had ruled Thailand since 1782. King number nine was born in 1927 which meant that, upon his death, he was Thailand’s longest-serving and extremely popular monarch. Amm felt his loss keenly.

“I was really sad when King number nine died, I was only used to this King, he was the centre of our lives, he was always there for all of my life up to this point, and we all loved him, everyone in my country was so sad when he died.

“Whenever I go back to my country, the tears come to my eyes. I love Ireland and I love Heir Island, but I also love my country, and of course I miss lots of things about it, especially my family.

“I also miss some Thai food, but luckily I can find a lot of the ingredients I need to make it in West Cork. The fish in West Cork is really great and really fresh, and I am happy that Kevin and Finn love all my cooking. I do a mixture of all kinds of dishes, as well as lots of Thai food of course.

“I like Irish food a lot, there are some really great ingredients here so it tastes really wonderful.”

Amm is particularly talented at cooking and hopes to branch out into a food-related business on the island when Finn is a bit older. She is also very talented at crafts and enjoys making hand made soaps.

“ I am lucky because Kevin has a small boat and we can always get shopping. I also get out quite often to look for anything specific that I need and we bring Finn to some appointments once a week, so it’s great if we need some clothes shopping or anything like that for him.

“As well as that, I can just make an order and it gets delivered to the island. I am so happy we have good broadband because you can order everything online too, and of course I need to stay in touch with my family all the time which means the world to me. It’s great that they can to see Finn online, even though we are so far away. My life here would be so different without that.

“When I first moved here, I missed everything. I missed city life, I missed the people, but by the time the third year came, I began to settle down into it all, and now I love it here, I have got used to the quiet life in the winter and the busy days of the summer.

“We are friends with Craig Moore and Claudia Meloni, another young couple who live on the island, but we all agree that it would be great to see more young families move here and people who would like to raise their kids here.

We’d love to see more people coming to live here permanently, but it’s really hard to find accommodation. We are renting and looking out for a permanent home here.

“There are around 51 houses on the island and only ten used in the winter. It’s a real mix, there are houses which are derelict, and there are families who have been coming to their holiday homes here since the 1960s.

“Myself and Kevin hope that more people who would enjoy this lifestyle will consider coming to live here, we would love to see the population growing and for more people to enjoy this wonderful and special place which is so natural and beautiful.

“We hope this dream can become a reality.”

Next week: Aisling Meath interviews Ann Marie Harrington who lives on Bere Island.