Syd Cheatle fighting for Sherkin Island’s very survival

“The funding continues as far as March and, after that, nobody knows what is going to happen. Obviously we are trying to lobby to prevent it being cut because it could spell the end of a healthy and well-populated island.”

Syd Cheatle, a long-established resident of Sherkin Island off west Cork, is worried about the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government's decision to cut its €600,000 a year support for community development officers on Sherkin and eight other non-Irish-speaking islands.

Cheatle, now in his 70s, was born in Rathgar in Dublin (where his late father Jack was leader of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra). In 1965 he moved to Sherkin from London, where he was working as an architect, and has lived there ever since. He currently chairs the West Cork Islands Community Council.

He moved to the 5km-by-3km island by chance, after putting an ad in The Irish Times London edition looking for a house for the summer. When a woman from Sherkin responded, he visited the island and was told of a house for sale – an old coastguard station.

“The house was in ruins,” he recalls, “but it was on a great site with its own beach and inlet and everything and, as I was an architect, I didn’t see any problem working on it – which I’ve been doing for 30 or 40 years. But it’s finished now.”

The first few years were the toughest. Working abroad as an architect for six months of the year to earn an income to do up the house, Cheatle and his wife Miriam used to camp out as they repaired the building that was to become the home in which they reared their three children.

Stormy island

“Last January we had that dreadful storm and the Atlantic invaded my house and it filled the house to a foot deep,” he says. “It took a few months of hard work and an extension of the sea wall to get things back to normal and solve the problem.”

Now, after surviving the worst the Atlantic could throw at the island, Sherkin and its neighbours, Heir and Long islands – and other west Cork islands such as Whiddy, Bere and Dursey– are facing another huge challenge.

Cheatle says that the advent of Leader funding in the 1990s was absolutely vital for the island’s survival. Sherkin and five other islands, both Irish-speaking and non- Irish-speaking, came together to form the Federation of Irish Islands/Comhdhail Oileáin na hÉireann, and successfully applied for development money.

The six islands received £1.25 million in Leader funding from Europe, and then taoiseach John Bruton sanctioned a further £1 million, which allowed major development work to take place with improvements to piers and harbours.

“Traditionally, farming and fishing were the main source of employment on Sherkin,” Cheatle says. “And, up to 1994, the big problem was people leaving the island. But now we have had the reverse situation of inward migration, with people of almost every nationality living and working here.

“That influx of people over the last number of years, which has kept the population relatively stable at around 100, was largely due to the presence of Leader funding and community development workers. That’s because they had somebody they could go to and get the information from.”

Now, he says, "that's probably all put in jeopardy with the cut to the community development office programme. We fear we are going to lose our community development officer, Aisling Moran, who looks after us as well as Heir Island and Long Island. "

Cheatle is the author of two plays produced in the Abbey in the 1970s and a comedy, Straight Up, which proved a West End hit back in 1971. He is expansive and descriptive as he describes the work done by Moran in her role as community development officer

“Aisling is our development worker and she is very good and very efficient and very approachable,” he says. “She puts you in touch with all the relevant agencies you need, she tells you how to go about things and advises and is extraordinarily helpful.

“She takes care of everything, from nurses’ visits to the island to publicising the school here to try and attract children from the mainland to keep up the numbers – ordinary everyday things. She’s like a citizen’s advice bureau, and I can’t think how we will survive without her.

“We are also losing our Leader funding because Leader is now being euphemistically ‘aligned’ with the county councils, which returns us to the state we were in 20 years ago,” Cheatle says.

“Losing Leader and the Community Development Programme is a real double whammy for us and the other islands.”