THERE are few pleasures in life more sweet than walking the slopes of Cape Clear. I have a clear recollection of doing so some years ago and, to my surprise, over a low stone wall, seeing a familiar figure.
He was an engineer from Cork who seemed to spend his life in witness boxes acting for one side or the other in difficult cases where expert advice was called for. To get away from it all, he had taken the Naomh Ciaran from Baltimore to the Cape, where he had thrown himself down in a field overlooking the North Harbour. He was reading his newspaper and soaking up the silence.
In summer, tourists flock to the Gaeltacht island. Children go to learn Irish, sailors come ashore to taste the hospitality, and the busy ferry brings trippers in droves. But when the crowds depart who is left? Just the islanders listening to the heartbeat of their own place. Few make the journey in November or December without good reason. That's when the islanders and their go ahead co operative usually plan their future.
Last Friday, something special should have happened on Cape Clear but it didn't. It doesn't matter, there will be another day. But why the special day had to be cancelled tells much about island life. ESB officials, together with the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Dukes, should have been on the island to attend the formal switch on of the mains electricity supply.
The party was to travel from Baltimore on the Naomh Ciaran but the boat developed engine trouble earlier in the week and, with no replacement vessel available, the celebrations had to be deferred. For a few days, the islanders were cut off. Bad weather often has the same effect.
The coming of an electricity supply to Cape Clear will bring welcome changes. There are only two electric cookers on the island, and up to two weeks ago, before the power was unofficially switched on, the islanders had to endure restrictions on taking showers. That was because the power was being supplied by generators and it had to be shared carefully.
Cooking was done by bottled gas. The heavy gas canisters had to be brought in by ferry and then manhandled to the various houses on the island. For the elderly, this was a particular chore. Now, a reliable, permanent power source has arrived on the Cape, via undersea cable from neighbouring Sherkin Island.
It will give the islanders the luxury of options they didn't have before this," said Mr Seamus O Drisceoil of Comharchumann Chleire Teo, the co op that has achieved so much for the island in its 28 year history.
Electric cookers will make life easier for the islanders. There will be instant showers, electric clocks, which couldn't be used heretofore because of the inconsistency of the power supply, and night rate electricity. A reliable power source will also enable the more wide spread use of computers. The noisy diesel generators will now fall silent as a new era opens for Cape Clear.
The island got its first power supply in 1972 when the generators were brought in, and in 1987 two windmills were erected to harness windpower. Wind is one commodity in plentiful supply on the Cape. The German backed wind energy project was not, for various reasons, taken over by the ESB, as the islanders had hoped. Instead, the comharchumann assumed control of the project and has now applied for planning permission to upgrade the windmills. When that happens, Cape Clear will be able to sell electricity to the national grid.
On the commercial front, the arrival of the mains supply has allowed Turbard Teo, the land based fish farm on the island, to change its pumping system from diesel to electric, giving a 20 per cent improvement in efficiency. The fish farm employs five people and is exporting 30 tonnes of fish annually to Britain and Europe.
The aim now is to attract an outside investor and to push production to 100 tonnes a year. The comharchumann is also planning to introduce a solar energy project to the island and to develop a ragworm farm there, producing angling bait in commercial quantities. There are also plans to stock Loch Ioral on the island with rainbow trout and to develop it as an amenity attraction.
This is how the comharchumann sums up its philosophy: "Rinne an Comharchumann iarracht morfhadhbanna an oileain a leigheas. Ce nar baineadh roinnt dfobh amach, thainig feabhas ar a lan nithe da bharr. Ni gan dua a baineadh amach an dul chun cinn seo. Nil cursai foirfe ach is olc an scath is fearr na lomnochta.
Agus nilmid criochnaithe go foill!"
The Naomh Ciaran is back in action, and the formal switch on will take place sometime next month or in early April. The 17 schoolchildren on the island were present when the then Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, commissioned the windmill project in 1987. They will be present again when the next great day for the island dawns.