‘Bleak islands’ to be depopulated

TWO Co Galway islands now considered tourist hideaway havens were considered only in gloomy terms as the 1973 coalition prepared to move the inhabitants to the mainland.

Inis Turk and Inis Turbot were described in a Land Commission memorandum as “small, lowlying (sic), bleak islands situate (sic) about half mile off the Galway coast, near Clifden”.

The memo continued: “There is no priest, doctor or nurse on the islands and Mass is said on each island only on one Sunday per month. There is no electricity; some islanders use bottled gas for lighting and cooking.

“Contact with the mainland is by radio-telephone. All the men on both islands, over 18 and under pension age, are reported to be getting social welfare assistance. These are not Irish-speaking communities.”

It was stated six of the seven families who made up Turks’s 37 inhabitants wanted to relocate to the mainland but one man with two school-going children did not want to move.

Twelve of the 16 families who made up Turbot’s 66 inhabitants also wanted to move, with three elderly bachelors and an elderly couple wanting to stay.

The Cabinet approved assistance of £80,000 towards buying sites and houses on the mainland.

The moves to depopulate Turk and Turbot came at a time when inhabitants of Cape Clear Island off Co Cork were campaigning for supports and incentives for island dwellers.

Comharchumann Chléire Teo, the local development organisation, set out a “Manifesto for the Islands”, calling for abolition of income tax for islanders, cost-of-living and building subsidies and the granting of local authority status to island co-operatives.