Academics refused entry to Spike Island

THE Irish Prison Service has blocked top academics from visiting Spike Island ahead of a conference on its tourism potential organised by those fighting the government’s super-prison plans for the island.

Conference organiser Michael Martin said he sought permission for conference speakers, UCC Professor Dermot Keogh and Queens University’s Dr Steven Royle, to visit the former prison site before the event.

Prison service officials turned down the request, and Mr Martin said he was “very disappointed”.

Today’s conference entitled Spike Island: Hidden History, An Opportunity in Tourism, will explore the historical significance of Spike Island and outline its tourist potential.

Mr Martin is expected to lead criticism of the government’s plans to build a super-prison on the island.

Devised by East Cork Tourism, Cobh Tourism and the Cobh Junior International Chamber, the conference will be addressed by Rich Weidman, the head of public affairs at San Francisco’s Alcatraz, one of America’s top tourist attractions.

Mr Martin, the creator of the hugely successful Titanic Trail Guided Heritage Tour of Cobh and chairman of Cobh Tourism, said Spike has similar potential.

He has discovered that the bodies of up to 700 convicts may have been buried on the island during the 1800s.

“There was a penal colony on Spike from 1847 to 1883. Instead of sending convicts to Australia, they were sent to Spike,” said Mr Martin.

“44.6% who went to Spike never came off it. These are young men from Tipperary, Skibbereen and Galway. Men aged 16, 17 and 18 buried in unmarked and unidentified graves.

“The building of a bridge and a super-prison on Spike will destroy this site,” he said.

“[The Department of Justice] is about to desecrate the island. They will be akin to the Taliban if they go ahead.

“On the sites of former concentration camps in Germany, [that] government grants no permission for development ... in deference to the people who suffered there. Spike Island should be treated in the same way,” said Mr Martin.

The conference begins in the Commodore Hotel in Cobh at 9am this morning.