Anna is island’s pride and Heir’s only schoolgirl

FOR any young family, life in the countryside has many benefits, but Melanie Hann and Ian Humphreys have the best of both worlds.

The home they built on Heir Island off the west Cork coast two years ago has all the modern conveniences of any house, but they have a mere 20 neighbours.

Their daughters, Anna and Mya, aged 5 and 3 respectively, are the first children living on the island for many years.

“It’s great bringing them up here. It’s such a beautiful place for kids to grow up in,” said Ms Hann.

“With a new home and running water and electricity, it’s probably a lot easier to live here than it was many years ago,” she said.

The shortage of services was probably a factor in the exodus of many families from the island in recent decades, and falling numbers also led to the closure of its national school in 1976.

Mary Harte was a pupil there that summer and crossed to the mainland the following September to continue her primary education.

She lives in Aughadown, just a couple of kilometres from the slipway where boats from Heir Island are tied up. Yesterday, she brought her daughter Róisín for her first day at junior infants in Lisheen National School. Róisín and Anna Humphreys were already friends from a local playschool and so were delighted to meet up again in class. Their meeting made a coincidental link between Heir Island 1976 and 2007, a gap of more than three decades.

It is one of a number of inhabited islands off the Cork coast but the population stood at just 24 when the last census was taken in April last year, three people fewer than when the 2002 census was taken.

“Everyone has been very excited to have kids on the island again and it is a big day for everybody, being Anna’s first day at school.

“We even had a welcoming party when we arrived at Cunnamore on the mainland this morning,” said Ms Hann.

She and partner Ian had lived nearby since 1999 before moving to Heir Island. Both work as painters in their studio attached to the house.

“Anna’s favourite colour is pink so she was hoping her uniform might be pink but the wine jumper was close enough, I think,” said her proud mother.

With Mya starting in playschool on the mainland this autumn, it will be a busy time for their parents crossing over and back every day for the next 10 years. And, after that, the girls will each have at least another five years of second-level education to look forward to in Skibbereen or Schull.