Festival celebrating Irish culture under way

One of the country’s premier Irish cultural festivals, which is expected to attract up to 10,000 visitors by the weekend, is under way in Killarney.

The Oireachtas na Gaeilge festival, based in the INEC, Gleneagle Hotel, will give a €4m off-season boost to the tourist town.

The event, which celebrates the native language, music, song and dance, was last held in the Co Kerry town in 2011 and is due to return in 2014, due mainly to the suitability of the venue and availability of accommodation in the area.

Highlights include the sean nós singing competition for the Seán Ó Riada Memorial Cup and sean nós dancing competitions, to be shown live on TG4.

There will also be a tribute to the late writer and musician, Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé, from the west Kerry gaeltacht, who died earlier this year. A special programme on Raidio na Gaeltactha to be broadcast from the Oireachtas will be dedicated to his memory.

Legendary footballer Mick O’Connell, from Valentia, will launch an exhibition of photographs of the Blasket Island community, taken between 1892 and 2010.

The exhibition, opening in the Government offices, New Road, Killarney, tonight, will be the first time the exhibition is being shown outside west Kerry.

This exhibition, featuring a small selection from the collection in the Blasket Centre Archive, was assembled in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the centre. The centre has built up a valuable collection of photographs of the island and the islanders.

“Rarely does a week go by that we don’t receive a photograph from somewhere in the world,” said centre director Mícheál de Mórdha. “It is a unique and authentic collection of Blasket photographs, some of which have not been widely seen to date. It is a visual feast of emotive imagery and also a visual record of a lost community, of which only a few individuals survive.”