Island should welcome tourists — not prisoners

RECENTLY I attended a conference in Cobh, Co Cork, entitled ‘Spike Island: Hidden History. An Opportunity in Tourism’.

An expert panel of speakers outlined the history of the island and spoke of similar places around the world that are now tourist attractions and places that celebrate history.

Rich Weideman, who has worked with the US Parks Department in Alcatraz for 25 years, spoke of the success of the infamous ‘Rock’. When it opened in 1973, it had 50,000 visitors. In 2005, it had 1.4 million visitors. It is so successful that it turns away close to one million visitors each year.

Mr Weideman conceded that Spike Island has a much more significant history than Alcatraz, with vast potential as a place that tourists will want to visit. Charles Fort in Kinsale has attracted 60,000 visitors a year. Spike Island has a similar fortress, but a greater diversity of history. Tourism worldwide is expected to double in the next 20 years. We need new attractions if we are to capture a share of that growth. Heritage attractions are important for nearly half of all visitors to Ireland. Spike is steeped in heritage.

Yet the Government is blindly proceeding with Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s plan to link the island to the mainland with a bridge and to build a super prison on an area clearly marked as a convict cemetery and monastic site. The alternatives for the island have not been explored.

Surely a study of Spike’s other potential uses should be commissioned before the island is destroyed by bulldozers. There are many sites for a prison. There is only one Spike Island.

Hendrick Verwey

Kenver

Old Church

Cobh

Co Cork