Up to 23,000 people have applied for a job on the Great Blasket Island, Co Kerry. The job runs from April 1 to October and those selected will be in charge of three guest cottages and the coffee shop on the island which is just off Co Kerry.

Like many great artists, poet WB Yeats recognised the enduring human need to reconnect with an imagined, probably lost idyll when he wrote The Lake Isle of Innisfree, in 1888: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.”

Inshore fishermen in Kerry are calling for an immediate cull of the seal population of the Blaskets and surrounding coastal areas, claiming that the damage to fish stocks and nets is now simply “unsustainable”.

IT’S commonplace nowadays to hear concerns about the impact of large numbers of visitors on wild places, writes Donal Hickey.

They've been abandoning higher ground.

Catch up on the headlines.

A campaign is under way and funding is to be sought for public toilets in the most westerly point in the EU.

It is a place of worship, but not in the traditional sense. The towering cliffs of Inishnabro are known as the cathedral rocks as they resemble a magnificent church. Some, but not many, have come to kneel at their altar, writes Dan MacCarthy.

The blackberry is very much part of folk and rural traditions, writes Donal Hickey

FOR much longer than millennia, islands have been a source of intrigue, writes Dan MacCarthy. Someone gazes out from the mainland wondering: “What is out there?”

It looks like Star Wars has already had an impact on Irish tourism, as Skellig Michael, which features in The Force Awakens, was named among the top ten attractions along the Wild Atlantic Way by tourists.

Last Monday, as I left the house for a late night walk, a hundred or more woodlice were climbing the walls outside my front door. 

Just beyond the breaking surf at the White Strand on the Great Blasket island, seals were standing up in the water to get a better look at us humans. 

Two projects in Co Kerry and one in Co Cork are among seven nationally to benefit from funding of €350,000 being provided by the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht.

A leading global travel guide has named Kerry as the second best destination in Europe for family holidays, trailing Kent in England.

Filmmaker Simon Hambrook tells Sharon Ní Chonchuir how a hippie upbringing off the Kerry coast has become a source of creativity

In 1948, newspapers dubbed Gearóid Cheaist Ó Catháin the ‘loneliest boy in the world’: he was the sole child on the Blaskets, and now is the only surviving evacuee of 1953-54, says Áilín Quinlan.

There are concerns that access to an historic Kerry island visited by thousands of people each year may be restricted unless urgent repairs are carried out to a mainland pier.

"Lads, is it over yet?"

Even on the day of their departure from the Great Blasket Island for the last time 60 years ago, the final 22 inhabitants fell victim to the whims of the Atlantic — the constant presence that had shaped the rhythm of their lives.

Malin to Mizen.

BAILE na nGall means the foreigners’ town, referring to a 9th century Viking settlement at Smerwick, a Norse name meaning the butter harbour.

The ruins of an old schoolhouse on the historic Great Blasket Island are soon expected to be in state ownership.

A new book on the social history of the Great Blasket Island contains photographs taken by The Cork Examiner of the evacuation of the island almost 60 years ago.

WEARERS of luxury mink coats once saw themselves at the height of fashion, but mink has now become a pest and a plague on other wildlife.

IT was a sad and cold Christmas Eve. The year was 1953, and the 22 souls who still remained on Great Blasket Island were leaving on the ferry the next morning.

A 90-YEAR-OLD former Blasket islander, who has spent most of his life in the US, has announced a €1,000 bursary for Kerry Gaeltacht students.

EFFORTS to convert the Irish-speaking residents of the Great Blasket Island to Protestantism will be among the subjects to be discussed at the annual Blasket Commemoration, in Dunquin, Co Kerry, this weekend.

Rescue workers clawed their way up steep rocks in complete darkness early today to reach an injured woman on one of Ireland’s most remote islands.

WHERE were your great- or even great-great-grandparents on the night of March 31, 1901?

A snapshot of Irish life at the start of the last century has gone online today.

THE rousing cover picture of Michael Collins, fists clenched and in full flight, sets the tone of Great Irish Heroes, a lively collection of stories of men and women whose names have reverberated through the pages of history.

ONE of the last surviving natives of the Great Blasket Island, Micheál O Cearna, 89, was last evening conferred with an honorary doctorate of literature.

THE worst fears people had for wildlife on the Great Blasket Island have been realised, following confirmation that deadly mink have appeared on the island, off the Dingle Peninsula.

Donal Hickey on protecting wildlife on the Blaskets.

A DECISION by An Bord Pleanála to grant planning permission for a cafe on the Great Blasket Island opens the way for the purchase of the island by the Government.

THE possible arrival of rats on the Great Blasket Island could have “devastating consequences” for seabird colonies there, a BirdWatch Ireland expert warned.

A SENIOR Kerry County Council engineer yesterday rejected a claim of “collusion” between the council and the promoters of a planned cafe on the Great Blasket Island.

A TORTUOUS saga surrounding Government plans to buy the Great Blasket Island is set to continue even further, it emerged at the weekend.