THE DEATH has taken place of the outspoken Dingle solicitor Peter Callery, whose company owned most of the Great Blasket Island in Co Kerry, until earlier this year.
Mr Callery came to national attention in the late 1980s when he, his brother Jim and two others challenged the 1989 Blasket Island Act which would have forced them to sell their holdings on the Great Blasket Island to the State.
The act was introduced by then taoiseach Charles Haughey, who himself owned a neighbouring island in the Blasket group.
Ten years after its introduction the Act was struck down in the Supreme Court as being unfair and having ethnic and racial overtones in that it would have forced non-native islanders, such as the Callerys and their fellow directors, to sell their holdings while allowing descendants of native islanders to retain theirs.
Earlier this year the State bought out most of Mr Callery’s company’s property on the island.
Mr Callery, who was in his late 70s, died in Cork University Hospital on Saturday. Funeral Mass takes place at noon at St Mary’s Church in Dingle tomorrow.