A drop in the ocean

A KINSALE island linked to property developer Gerry Gannon is to be sold by tender next month, likely to make a quarter of the sum it last sold for in the mid-2000s.

Scenic Sandycove Island has 18 acres of wild grazing, within a stone’s skip of the sheltered inlet and slip at Sandycove: estate agent Darragh Taaffe, of Keane Mahony Smith, says “if required, we can arrange a craft to transport potential buyers onto the island.” That’s in contrast to its last floatation on the market, when it was visited by helicopters and RIB boats. Today, when the tide is low enough, penny-pinching viewers keen on an island idyll could wade out to the island and only get half wet.

The island — without any buildings whatsoever, and most unlikely to get a planning permission grant unless building underground, was first mentioned in the Pacta Hibernia for its bearing on the 1601 arrival of the Spanish Armada and Don Juan de Aquila to Kinsale.