West Mayo pier condemned as unsafe

By Tom Gillespie

ROONAGH Pier, outside Louisburgh, the main landing port for Clare Island (population 150), was built in the wrong location, it has been claimed.

Because of high seas, the facility is inaccessible for a third of the year and has been described as ‘very unsafe’.

The charge has been levelled by Mr. Brendan Tobin, the Clare Island community coordinator, who said the pier on the island is equally unsatisfactory.

He commented: "We have great difficulties with Roonagh Pier. Sometimes it is not safe to come out from the island. Roonagh Pier has been totally ineffectual for the people. It is blocked off for maybe a third of the year.

"People cannot get in or out of it because it is built in the wrong place and the pier on Clare Island, when built, was left 30 metres short because some of the money for it was taken out to the Aran islands."

A barrister by profession, Mr. Tobin, who has been working on Clare Island for the past two years, said the islands most marginalised were the English speaking outposts.

He said: "The islands department has always been in the Department for the Gaeltacht. They can finance a lot of stuff on Gaeltacht islands through the Gaeltacht programme, which does not apply on our island, and we are left struggling.

"We don’t have the same educational support as well as a range of different things. So Clare Island ends up as perhaps the only large populated island in the country that does not have a safe year-round harbour.

"For 29 years the islanders have been clambering about that."

Referring to Roonagh, he said: "If you have a big swell there, even a nice day, you have people in their 70s and 80s going in for medical appointments and the boat is going up and down in a two-foot rise and it is just not safe.

"After many years a process has just begun in which they are looking at what is required for a safe harbour on the mainland and what needs to be done out on Clare Island.

"The thing is, there is no patchwork solution. A band aid is not going to do it.

“What is required is, if they are going to make Roonagh safe, would be extensive breakwaters.

"They need to be large because it is a wide open ocean - the last place you want to build a harbour. If it is going to be done it will have to be done with a vision looking forward.

"The fishermen have pointed out that there is no safe harbour from Rossaveal to Killybegs that is safe all year round and the boats have to leave Clare island in a south-easterly."