Wardens to take care of remote site
Ruins on Blasket
A COUPLE have beaten tens of thousands of applicants to become the caretakers of the Great Blasket Island off the coast of Co Kerry.
Dun Laoghaire duo Annie Birney and Eoin Boyle moved to the isolated spot on Wednesday and will be greeting guests as they get back to business this week.
Kildare couple Lesley Kehoe and Gordon Bond were previously the wardens on An Blascaod Mor (Great Blasket), which has no electricity and water that comes from a spring.
They told the Irish Mirror last year they “just fell in love with the place” on a visit and applied for the job.
Lesley said: “I had been working in the heritage sector at a Seamus Heaney exhibition and Gordon was in the civil service at the time.
ROUTINE
“I loved my work but we both wanted a bit of a change and a break from our routine so we decided to go for it and 10 days later we got the job.”
She revealed there was one power socket in the building they lived in and that was enough to charge her phone and take bookings.
Part of the reason the island had to be evacuated in the 1950s was emergency services were unable to reach it in bad weather.
There are no permanent residents on the island and annual plans to open it to tourists were hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
Alice Hayes and partner Billy O’connor own property on the island and received over 45,000 applications for the role of caretaker.
They have had to manage the site and its three properties throughout lockdown, only returning to Dingle on the mainland for supplies.
■ For details go to www. greatblasketisland.net.