LOSING THE FERRY WILL SINK US
21 years ago, the desperate families of Kerry’s Valentia Island bought their own car ferry: it is no exaggeration to say it saved them, and their home. Now, though, the ferry has been condemned. Without help to replace it, locals fear everything they buil
IT’S a beautiful, sunny morning, and I’m aboard the Valentia Island car ferry, skimming from the end of the old railway line at Renard Point on the north Kerry mainland, across the narrow channel of glistening water, towards Knightstown Harbour.
Slea Head and the Blasket Islands shimmer in the distance. Beginish Island to my right looks like a soft, green cushion, while Valentia’s Geokaun Mountain rears up ahead. In just four minutes, I’ve disembarked and arrived in picture postcard paradise. The quaint, red Victorian clock tower next to the marina has just chimed ten morning bells, but the tiny village of Knightstown is already buzzing. Garden benches at the Royal Valentia Hotel bustle with holiday-makers soaking up the morning sunshine. The sea air is filled with the thrilled squeals of children somersaulting from a water trampoline in the harbour.
A few yards up the road, outside Walsh’s shop, a group of German cyclists munch on sandwiches before making their way to board the ferry, Cahirsiveen-bound, to continue their Wild Atlantic Way adventure. Across at the Pod creperie and gift shop, the first coffees, ice-creams and crepes of the day are being handed out to passengers fresh off the ferry.
For six months of the year, between October and April, Knightstown is a ghost town. But come April 1, when the ferry engine chugs back to life, so does the village, as the boat and the summer season bring thousands of holiday-makers and daytrippers on to one of Ireland’s most stunning and remote islands.
Last year 250,000 passengers and 100,000 cars used the continuous ferry service — around 70 return trips a day — which charges €2 for foot passengers and €5 per car.
But now, just as Valentia Island comes through the worst of the recession and begins to reap the fruits of its success, the area is facing a terrifying return to the dark days it thought long gone. On September 30, the ferry may stop for good.
Five families who run the community ferry service have been told by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to decommission the boat for safety reasons. They have managed to find €1million, but require another €2million — a one-off cash injection — to buy a new ferry, which they will manage themselves.
Fáilte Ireland refused their application for a capital grant and right now, islanders are clinging to the hope Minister Shane Ross will step in. If he doesn’t, they fear the livelihoods of hundreds of families and businesses will go down the swanny.
There is no doubt that if the ferry goes, Knightstown will be decimated. Just as the Government spouts soundbites and releases its progress report on the Action Plan for Rural Ireland, to kickstart and support the economic and social progress of rural areas, islanders say it is beyond mind-boggling that it’s prepared to allow Knightstown to sink for the sake of a one-off investment. According to them, it’s a drop in the ocean compared with the vast economic returns, not just for the island, but businesses in Cahirsiveen and across the Iveragh Peninsula hinterland.
‘This is a test case really — this will prove if they really do care about rural Ireland or whether all this talk is pure waffle,’ says Paudie Lynch, a member of the ferry consortium.
His concern is echoed by Richard Horan, ferry manager and a former lighthouse-keeper, when I meet them at Richard’s home across from the jetty. We are joined by Vincent Kidd, owner of the Royal Valentia Hotel, a Dubliner who bought the hotel and moved here 12 years ago.
They have been up to Dáil Éireann, trying to drive home the vitality of the ferry, and hosted Shane Ross on a recent visit, but as yet, no promises have been made. ‘We’re telling them now, before they let this go and it destroys the island,’ says Richard.
Paudie continues: ‘We’re trying our best to develop rural Ireland and they pull our infrastructure. A minister in Dublin met us and said: “But haven’t you a bridge?” These people haven’t an iota about rural Ireland.’
Richard explains: ‘All the jobs outside tourism are gone, so for us, this is not about a boat, it’s important infrastructure.’
Valentia Island, part of the Skellig Ring and the Wild Atlantic Way, is totally dependent on visitors. The continuous ferry creates a natural, seamless circuit along the Wild Atlantic Way, from Cahirsiveen, across the water to Knightstown, looping down towards the Maurice O’Neill Memorial Bridge at the other side of the island, taking visitors on to Portmagee, the jump-off point for the hugely popular Skelligs.
When the ferry doesn’t run, the route loops back around on itself, rendering Valentia and Knightstown in particular, a cul-de sac — and an easy cut from time-strapped travellers’ itineraries.
It’s my first time on the island but I’m blown away, not just by the stunning scenery, but by its fascinating history, culture and the sheer amount of things to see and do. It’s truly a jewel, not just in Kerry’s crown, but the country’s.
It was here, in August 1858, that the first transatlantic cable was laid connecting Europe with Heart’s Content in Newfoundland and the location of the first ‘tech’ boom. There’s the Tetrapod Walkway, 385-million-yearold footprints of the first animal to walk from sea on to land, the jawdropping 360-degree views from Geokaun Mountain across to the Blaskets, the Skellig Rocks and the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks. There’s the awesome Fogher Cliffs, as well as the awe-inspiring Grotto built into the mountainside at the slate quarry, which famously supplied slate for the British Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. There are exotic gardens, the lighthouse at Cromwell Point to explore, umpteen ancient ring forts, heritage centres, not to mention watersports in the harbour.
Vincent Kidd took over the Royal Valentia Hotel with his sister and brother in 2005. Back then it was in a dilapidated state, but after ploughing about €3million into revamping the premises, it’s now 75% complete, with renovations ongoing, including additional buildings for weddings. It employs between 30-40 local people.
‘The ferry going is the biggest threat to our business,’ he says. ‘After all the work we’ve done in the past 12 years, and in our previous families’ businesses, it’d be for nothing. If anything happens to the ferry, the impact on the Royal and the small businesses will be unimaginable.’
Of course, on an island with no doctor, no ambulance or fire engine, no chemist, no gardaí, no secondary school and no ATM, to locals, the ferry is a lifeline.
‘People who’ve never been here don’t understand how much we need it,’ says Vincent. ‘I hear time and again from locals, who can’t overstate its importance. The ferry means locals can be in Cahirsiveen in ten minutes, but in the other direction, it’s a 30-mile round trip, much of it over winding, bog roads.’
For mother-of-two Mary LynchCoffey, the ferry gave her family irreplaceable solace. Her son Éanna, died last October of the rare condition Epidermolysis Bullosa (butterfly skin), when he was just a year old. Mary doesn’t know how they would have coped in Éanna’s final months without the ferry.
‘The ferry was our lifeline when Éanna was sick. The closest doctor is in Cahirsiveen. It meant so much that Dr Donovan, nurses and Éanna’s hospice nurse could come
‘This will prove if they care about rural Ireland’
fast when he needed them. The ferry carried medicines when we had an emergency. It’s carried ambulances and the fire brigade, getting them across in five minutes instead of 30 minutes.’
Indeed, the very recent economic history of the island can be categorised as follows: the dark ages, before the ferry started up, and the golden age that has been slowly dawning ever since. Since the 1930s, islanders campaigned for a bridge to join the island at Knightstown with the Kerry mainland. But for economic reasons, the bridge — opened in 1971 — was linked with Portmagee.
Knightstown all but died. All bar one shop remained, and six different owners tried to make a success of the Royal Valentia.
In a desperate bid to revive the island, five local families pooled their money, and bought the Dutch second-hand God Met Ons III. It arrived to great fanfare in 1996.
Valentia Island Ferries was born and with it, came Knightstown’s turning tide. As well as driving the ferry seasonally, Donal Walsh mans the island’s only grocery store. His father Tony opened the shop in 1950, but closed it in 1993 because ‘before the ferry the place was stone dead, no tourists, nothing’. Three years later the ferry started. ‘Things slowly came back. People bought holiday homes, the water sports started. Look at it now, none of this was here 15 years ago.’
He warns: ‘People born since the ferry started don’t realise how far back we can go, they don’t know the place without it. We’ll sink.’
Three years ago, Donal stopped shell-fishing the winter months and reopened his father’s shop. ‘It’s a success story, but only for the summer months. July and August makes it worth our while, in the winter we barely survive.’
Down at the marina I meet Sandra O’Connor, who set up her sea sports business five years ago. She now has 18 staff, looking after up to 150 children a day during the summer months, and has also just opened a coffee shop. Many campers holiday on the island, but she also has traffic from the mainland.
‘They wouldn’t make the trip if it was a 30-mile round-trip using the bridge,’ she says. ‘Definitely the passing trade for the coffee shop depends on the ferry. It’d be a huge blow to the island, even locals getting over and back to town.’
The island’s summer success is such I bump into a handful of teenagers, natives and holiday-makers alike, who are juggling two summer jobs here, including up the road at the Pod, where Siobhan, a mother and former schoolteacher, opened her gift shop in 2007 and started doing food in 2013. She opens from Easter to September.
‘In winter, you mightn’t see one car passing the shop here for half an hour.
‘The holiday-makers will keep coming, but a lot of the business here depends on day-trippers.
‘There’s no jobs here — some years only three kids start school — but the ferry brings at least a decent summer for families to keep their heads above water. It benefits so many people, it’s not just a rural Ireland white elephant.
‘If the ferry went, my business wouldn’t sustain itself. My season is already short and a struggle. It’s very worrying as we’ve a mortgage to cover too and a family.’
Nobody embodies the pioneering, resilient and visionary spirit of islanders more than Muiris and Bernie O’Donoghue. As well as running the ferry, they kept cows and sheep next to Geokaun Mountain, where they raised their family, but in 2006 decided to invest €60,000 of their own money, helped by some State funding, to build a road and enable public access to the highest point on the island, with its jaw-dropping views.
Since then they have ploughed their own money into transforming it into one of the most stunning tourist attractions in the country. They built a viewing deck at the Fogher Cliffs, roads, three parking areas en route to the summit, viewing spots, as well as picnic tables around the mountain, and designed and mounted 50 information panels on the area’s mythology, history, fauna and geography.
Bernie has also produced an array of local visitor maps and guides. The Geokaun Mountain experience opens seven days a week and costs just €5 per car and €2 per pedestrian — it’s free during much of winter.
‘We all remember Knightstown before the ferry and none of this would have been possible,’ they tell me. ‘We all did so much here to lift the whole of south Kerry and invite people to discover this unbelievably beautiful part of Ireland.’
For the O’Donoghues, Geokaun Mountain is their Field of Dreams. They built it, and indeed, they came. The question now is, will it all be torn down?
‘The ferry going is the biggest threat to business’