A bright new horizon for Inishturk Island

There was a large crowd and a warm welcome in the Inishturk Community Club on the first Friday of this month. Some there were natives, some veteran visitors, while others had made the trip out to the island for the first time.

For the newbies, the visit was their first encounter with a fundamental truth: Inishturk is the most beautiful place you could hope to visit. The view across to the mountains of west Mayo and north Galway is spectacular. In a very strong field, with many contenders, it is the finest view anywhere in our county.

We all came out to Inishturk on June 5th not just to look at beautiful views, but to look to the future. The gathering in the Community Club was to launch the island’s Renewed Community Futures Strategy, with Dara Calleary, Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht in attendance. Various projects delivered by many agencies and funders were described and lauded, and the Minister highlighted what these projects and initiatives are all about: the importance of community and of supporting our communities into the future, long after this present generation have moved on.

The projects covered infrastructure, harbour development, digital connectivity, health supports, environmental sustainability, and tourism, including the delivery of key community amenities and accommodation. In that last category, the new community playground and the community cottages project – providing accommodation options for visitors – were specifically mentioned.

As well as those, the critical importance of connectivity for any island was emphasised. This is why ferry services and the island’s fantastic new helipad are so vital. But connectivity today means more than just traditional transport. Ensuring a high speed and reliable digital connection is, in the 21st century, as essential to social and economic life as the opening of a new factory was to west of Ireland communities in the late 20th century. This is why the rollout of fibre broadband on the island has been such an important project. With it, you can both live and much more easily work on the island. High speed broadband takes the ‘remote’ out of working even on an island off the west coast of Ireland. That transforms the opportunity and possibility of people settling on the island in the 21st century.

These programmes and projects are therefore what keeps island life alive, and more importantly, allows island life and community to thrive. Each of those projects are individually valuable and sometimes it is possible to miss the strategy behind them all in combination. And so the gathering allowed everyone to get a sense of how each project is contributing to the overall objective. It also allowed people to meet each other and with the brilliant people on the island to share ideas about how to maximise the impact of their work.

Now of course every community across our region understands the importance of such projects, and in that sense this is a familiar story. But island living is special and not just to islanders, and that means we all need to protect it by investing in it.

It is special for its unique mix of poetry and hardship. Living on one of our islands means you live in a beautiful place and experience a unique way of life. If you know a more peaceful place than Inishturk you are lucky – but poetry and peace also come at a price. When the ocean swell is up, the evenings are short, and the easy access to services which so many of us take for granted is absent, that price is obvious. Island people know this and do not shirk from it. They have built their community around the challenges as well as the joys of the location, and forged a special community bond which not even the powerful word ‘meitheal’ does justice to. When you live on an island, pulling together is not just a sound principle, but an operational necessity.

But even with that powerful spirit, island life would simply not endure without support and investment. That is why the great work and admirable initiatives highlighted in the Community Club launch are not just important, they are essential. One of those essential initiatives is the new website for the island – inishturkisland.com – which is a real shop window for this special place. Whether you have been before or not, you can use it to digitally land on the island and get a flavour of just how magnificent it is.

But, good and all as it is – and it is really good – the website can only do so much. So this summer, if you can, take the ferry out from Roonagh, even if just for the day. The size of Inishturk makes it very suitable for a day trip. There is a very manageable and well-maintained circular walk, which will also bring you up and over the island, and which allows you to admire the views north, south, east and west. Passing by the famous football pitch, that tribute to the human spirit, is a thrill for anyone, even those whose heart does not race when the ball is thrown in. The view from the Napoleonic-era Signal Tower will make all hearts race, and is an incredible reward for what is a fairly manageable climb. At that summit, you can appreciate almost half of Mayo’s coastline.

It will be a day you will never forget, and not just for the spectacular beauty of the place. You will also get to appreciate the wonderful people and the work they are doing to make the island community what it is. At the launch, the Minister made the point that everyone can learn and gain from what can be achieved on the island, a point he reinforced by describing hearing the corncrake as he was shown around. You too will feel the special island welcome, and by the time you leave you will fully appreciate why a thriving Inishturk community into the future will help all to thrive.