INISHMURRAY IMPASSE
STAKEHOLDERS HOPE TO FIND A SOLUTION TO THE ACCESS ROW AT THE ISLAND BEFORE THE TOURIST SEASON BEGINS
AN urgent meeting has been called between all the stakeholders involved in the row over access to Inishmurray Island.
Deputy Tony McLoughlin suggested the round table talks last Tuesday when local boat operators, relatives of former residents and Sligo tourism representatives met the Minister of State with special responsibility for Tourism Brendan Griffin in the Sligo Park Hotel.
Boat owners who have been providing day trips to the island for decades were shocked to receive a letter from the Ballyshannon-based Marine Survey Office (MSO) attached to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport on 26 th March, warning them to stop immediately or face prosecution.
The MSO said this was “due to concerns for safety during embarking and disembarking at the island.”
Speaking to The Sligo Champion after the meeting, Minister Griffin said he wanted to find out what prompted the MSO to issue the letter:
““I’m keeping an open mind in relation to this but I certainly feel just by shutting down operations without any further correspondence or further communications is not the way forward,” he said.
“As with anything with safety involved, you need to be careful. You have to protect visitors and operators that is paramount. There are questions about how real is the risk, what’s the record here?
“From listening to Deputy McLoughlin over the last number of weeks and to the boatmen here this morning there isn’t a serious safety issue it seems because there hasn’t been a record of accidents at this location.
“It’s not one that would immediately raise red flags so I would be very interested to know why this now all of a sudden has reared its head and that’s why I think Deputy McLoughlin’s proposal to get all the agencies around the one table is a good proposal because that way we can thrash out the issues involved,” he said.
Minister Griffin said the island was “very much an integral part” of Sligo’s tourism offering.
“Deputy McLoughlin has been raising this with me over the past number of weeks, I’d hoped to come here sooner. He raised it again in the Dáil on Thursday and he’s a question again in the Dáil on it today so he’s very anxious to get a resolution to it,” he said.
Aoife McIlroy of Fáilte Ireland attended in support of the boat owners, along with three members of the Brady family who used to live on the island and Cllr Marie Casserly.
Boat operator Keith Clarke said he was happy with the round table talks proposal.
“We’re happy with what Tony McLoughlin has proposed – a joint stakeholder meeting. We showed Minister Griffin the photos of the landing – we’ve never had any safety issue or accidents there,” he said after the meeting.
“We’re hopeful,” he added.
Other stakeholders expected to be invited to the talks include the MSO which issued the letter, the OPW, Sligo County Council, the Department of Tourism, Fáilte Ireland, Sligo Tourism, and former residents of the who left in 1948.
“They’d like to be able to get back to their homes as well. They feel they have a right to get back there which I feel they have and now they can’t get back to their homes,” said Minister Griffin.
“It’s more than just the tourism industry, we had people here involved in heritage conservation - they can’t get out to the island to survey the birds or look at the various heritage sites, who’s going to be able look after those and ensure that they’re being maintained or preserved for future generations to benefit from?”
“A load of people have a stake here. My role I think here is to try to co-ordinate the efforts to resolve the impasse.
“We have given a commitment to the people here today that without delay, as a matter of urgency to contact all of the stakeholders seeking a round table meeting to thrash out the issues involved and see if we can apply common sense to ensure that the operations can continue and at the same time, if there are safety concerns there that they can also be addressed.
“I’m marking the correspondence extremely urgent so I’d look to have that next week because I’m conscious of the fact that we have the May bank holiday weekend coming up and the kicking off of the tourism season.
“I’m keen that we don’t waste any time on this because every day you lose is potentially a lot of income for the people involved.
When asked when the meeting would be held, Minister Griffin said “hopefully no later than next week.”
“I would hope to be there because I feel I’ve a big interest here as the Minister for Tourism. My role is to improve all things tourism related and to smooth any related problems that arise and certainly this is a tourism related problem that has arisen. The resolution of this may be outside my own individual responsibilities but certainly the overall issue concerns me and it’s something I want to try to resolve.
“Deputy McLoughlin has brought me into this and I’m glad he has,” he said.
He was then asked if his Department would be willing to fund the construction of new landing facilities if that emerged as the only solution:
“I’m open to whatever the resolution may be, whatever the best way forward would be. That may be the case or some minor adjustments to practices may need to be done to ensure the safe continuation of visiting Inishmurray can continue.
“Everybody has a responsibility here to work with partners to ensure that people’s livelihoods are respected, that traditions are respected, that heritage is respected and the broader tourism industry is respected and the potential that that offers, both in terms of employment and jobs and the future of Sligo as well,” he said.
“Inishmurray is, and anything that takes a very important attraction off the Sligo offering is a concern to everybody in the tourism industry so I’m always working with both the agencies and the industry in terms of the tourism operators in this country to try to address issues as they arrive – if it was anywhere else in the country I’d be doing the same thing because my job is to try to help the tourism industry and this is challenging the industry,” he said.
This newspaper asked Minister Griffin if he knew why this issue was raised in 2008 and nothing was done about it in the last ten years.
“No and we want to get answers to that. That’s why getting everybody around the one table will help to shed more light on that particular questions,” he replied.
Deputy McLoughlin told The Sligo Champion that he and Minister Griffin listened to what everyone at last week’s meeting had to say on the matter:
“We had a very representative group here this morning, from the three Brady family members - the last residents of the island - all of the boat owners in the region that have been working on the island for the last 30 years - we listened to them all.
“I proposed that rather than the Minister meeting and talking to various people that he would meet all of the group.
“There’s so many vested interest groups in this, the OPW, Sligo County Council, Tourism Ireland, the Heritage Council. Rather than individually trying to make contact with the Minister, I suggested that we would sit all these people down, whether that would be in Sligo or in Dublin that this meeting would take place as a matter of urgency,” he said.
“The Minister has given an indication there and a commitment that as a matter of urgency he would be meeting with Minster Shane Ross to pursue this as quickly as possible.
“Keith Clarke has been telling me about a number of groupings that have already been booked for this summer from May onwards so I think it’s vitally important that timing is of the essence for this.
“There is a lot of worry and stress on these people – they’ve made huge investments. These guys were telling me about the money they’ve invested, they’re not going to take any chances going to the island unless they know that it’s safe both for their clients and their vested interests in the boats.
“They’ve been landing there for years and years and if there’s any swell they will not going to the island and will advise the hotels or Tourism Ireland or the Tourist Office here in Sligo.
“There have been no accidents there, none whatsoever, thankfully,” he added.
Councillor Marie Casserly believes access to the island must be managed better to ensure the historical island doesn’t turn into a “free for all.”
“It’s a monastic site and there are graves belonging to family members who live in north Sligo today,” she told this newspaper.
“We have to try and come up with a short term solution because there are tours organised and we want to make sure they go ahead,” she said.
“The descendants of former residents would be concerned about the fact that it can be opened up to anybody. Anybody who owns a boat can currently go out to the island and there’s nothign stopping you- it’s only commercial boat operators who charge passengers who have been told they can’t,” she said.
“Each passenger however is insured to the tune of ¤6million under the boat owners public liability insurance,” she said.
Cllr Casserly raised the issue with the Independent Alliance and Transport Minister Shane Ross last Saturday.