Kenny loops around lighthouse in trip back to his past

IT WASN’T quite Obama in Moneygall territory, but Enda Kenny’s visit to west Clare had an undoubted piquancy.

This was a homecoming of sorts for the Taoiseach yesterday as he arrived to open an exhibition at the Loop Head lighthouse where his grandfather once worked as the keeper.

It was his first visit to this stunning but remote peninsula, but his claim to local roots is secure, given James John McGinley’s sojourn at the lighthouse in 1933-1934.

Mr Kenny’s late mother, Eithne, played in the lighthouse as a child and his uncle, Patrick McGinley, who was present yesterday, was born in the adjoining cottage, he recalled for an audience of local schoolchildren and dignitaries.

This was the completion of a family journey that began almost 80 years ago, he said, when his grandfather came west to tend “a light at the edge of Europe”.

“I sometimes wonder what he and his fellow lighthouse men thought about in their lonely outpost, with only the Atlantic for company,” Mr Kenny mused, as the wind reminded the gathering of its constant presence and the rain started to fall.

The job sounded a bit like politics. “They endured gales, storms, long weeks and months of cold, loneliness, isolation.” Or maybe a lot like politics: “These men were sanguine, resilient, adaptable and resourceful, and knew their job.”

A closer insight into life on Loop Head during his grandfather’s time could be gleaned from the rules and regulations applying to staff, which were on display in the exhibition. These enjoined the keepers never to allow any interests to interfere with the discharge of their duties and to maintain “constant habits of cleanliness and good order”.

Staff were allowed a rough serge suit, two pairs of dungarees and 25 gallons of oil. There was also a cycling allowance of 1.5 pence a mile when bicycles were used for official duties.

As Mr Kenny recalled, his grandfather, like all lighthouse keepers, was a meticulous man, because he knew that the lives of travellers depended on him.

“He was a thoughtful man for whom the memory of Loop Head was as powerful as any breaker or riptide current, and he also played the fiddle.”

There has been a lighthouse on Loop Head since 1670 and the Taoiseach drew comfort from this “incredible tradition”. “In these times of acute transition and sacrifice for our people, we are working through that sacrifice because we know that success is on the horizon.”

Sadly, the horizon, with its potential views of the Dingle peninsula and the Twelve Bens in Connemara, was obscured by thick cloud.

Mr Kenny was in non-political, Friday afternoon mode, but he couldn’t resist using the lighthouse for a little bit of pre-referendum campaigning.

“Just as this white light sends out the signal of hope and safety and confidence, may your vote on the 31st be the white light of hope and confidence for the future.”

He was taken up the same spiral stone steps to the top of the 23 metre tower used by his ancestor to bring the oil that powered the lamp in the 1930s. The oil is gone now, as are the lighthouse keepers; Loop Head was converted to electricity in 1971 and then converted to automatic operation in 1991. But the light still shines, its clockwork rotation machine now powered by an electric motor.

During the second World War, a lookout post was built to keep an eye out for German aircraft and Éire was written on the ground in large letters for the benefit of approaching pilots – and it can still be seen.

The lighthouse was opened to the public for the first time last summer, when it attracted 17,000 visitors and created 15 badly needed seasonal jobs. It opens its wind-lashed but still sturdy doors again from today.