The scenic way to Shannon

LENNY ANTONELLI walks the Royal Canal on the Meath-Kildare border

Irish Times, Saturday 9 February 2013

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The Royal Canal was raised in the shadow of its big brother. In the 1750s the idea of a waterway linking Dublin to the north Shannon was rejected, and instead the more southerly Grand Canal was built.

In the 1780s a director of the Grand Canal Company quit to build a rival waterway. But the route of the Royal Canal wasn’t precisely planned, the project amassed huge debts, and the founding company was ultimately dissolved. The Royal Canal finally met the Shannon in 1817, costing far more than its rival. It never saw as much traffic either.

I followed the towpath east from Blackshade Bridge, Co Meath on a cold January afternoon, the sky coated with cloud too thin to dull the clear winter light. The canal was frozen shut in parts, while in places it seemed ice-free until I got close enough to see a film of cellophane-thin ice.

I day-dreamed of skating down the canal rather than walking beside it.

The canal bridged the Boyne on a limestone aqueduct, then passed under the Ribbontail footbridge, built to bring Massgoers to the church in Longwood. It may have been named after the Ribbonmen, a secret agrarian society that fought for farm workers’ rights.

In his book Irish Popular Superstitions, William Wilde described the departing journey of Longford emigrants on Royal Canal packet-boats.

“Their friends followed for a considerable distance, many, brimful of whisky as well as grief, crowding upon the bridges, and sometimes pulling the boat to the brink by the tow-rope, for the purpose of sending a message to one of their transatlantic friends,” he wrote. “All gradually fell back, except one very old woman, who, with her grey elf-locks streaming in the wind . . . ran after the vessel which contained her only son.” The canal welds human and natural engineering together. It’s layered with wildlife habitats but never too wild. Instead human design makes it seem sedate: the flat level, the straight channel, all those right angles.

The drone from the nearby M4 was constant, but it just made the canal seem more secret.

The Dublin-Sligo railway line follows the canal too.The Midland Great Western Railway Company bought the whole waterway in 1845 to build a track on the land beside it. But the arrival of trains to Ireland undercut the canal boats – even the light “fly boats” took eight hours to ferry passengers from Dublin to Mullingar.

CIÉ closed the Royal Canal in 1961. The western end dried up, locks decayed, and there were even plans to build a motorway on the Dublin city section. But campaigners fought to save to it, and in 2010 the full canal reopened. The towpath is now a long-distance walking trail, the Royal Canal Way, running from Dublin to the Shannon.

I passed Furey’s pub at Moyvalley and walked into Enfield in declining light. But you don’t have to follow my route to the letter: the train stops plenty between Dublin and Enfield, making day-walks between stations easy.

ROYAL CANAL WAY, BLACKSHADE BRIDGE TO ENFIELD

Trail Start at Blackshade Bridge, Co Meath, near M4. Finish at Enfield. At Moyvalley the trail crosses a busy road, and some steep road bridges are hard to see over. Seewaterwaysireland.orgfor canal sections. Three hours, 12.5km

Map irishtrails.ie. OSI Disc Series sheet 49.

Wildest Dublin

Lenny Antonelli walks the Dublin Mountains Way, one of Ireland's newest long-distance trails

Irish Times, 5 January, 2013

I went to Dublin seeking wild landscapes, not really expecting to find any. Living on the west coast I usually don’t travel far for this sort of thing. Going to Dublin to find mountains felt incongruous. Zig-zagging over the hills from Tallaght to Shankill, the Dublin Mountains Way is two years old. I started from the trailhead at Seán Walsh Park, Tallaght, aiming to make Glencullen by sunset. The trail skirted housing estates, then dropped me into comparative wilderness around the Bohernabreena reservoir, where the river Dodder was damned in the 1880s and wooded hills fall to the lakeshore.

This valley is also home to orchid-rich grassland and petrifying springs, where lime-rich water rises from the ground and deposits calcium carbonate in a white, crunchy coating.

The trail brought me into the hills, looking over to lime and rust-coloured slopes on Seahan and Corrig mountains. Walkers need to be cautious as this section is on narrow, windy roads.

I expected Celtic Tiger mansions up here and there were some. But it was mostly old stone cottages, hay sheds, farm yards and signs warning that dogs worrying sheep would be shot.

This valley – Gleann na Smól, glen of the thrushes – was one of the last places in which the Irish language survived near Dublin.

Heavy mist pressed down on the hills as I climbed. And though I couldn’t see them, I was surrounded by mountains.

The trail entered the Featherbed forest, but the name felt euphemistic as it crossed felled planation. I felt like a lone survivor in the aftermath of some brutal apocalypse, surveying a landscape of decaying tree stumps, black pools, churned peat and a few limbless trees. It reminded me of the writer Tim Robinson’s description of clear-felled forest in Connemara as “frozen at a moment of maximum horror”.

But soon I entered the forest at Cruagh, passing a mossy stone bearing an inscription to the naturalist HC Hart, who in 1886 bet a colleague that he could walk the 111km from Terenure to the summit of Lugnaquilla in Wicklow and back within 24 hours.

He won, returning to Terenure with 10 minutes to spare. The trail followed rows of mature spruce trees, heather, mosses, and flowering gorse.

I went up Tibradden Mountain and towards the summit of Two Rock, the way’s highest point. Writer and nationalist Stephen Gwynn described this area as “bare and lonely, as devoid of any suggestion of a great city’s nearness as even Connemara could show”. This is what I had come looking for, but I could only see a few metres of the trail rising into the clouds ahead of me.

Soon a gust of wind blew off the clouds to reveal Fairy Castle, Two Rock’s summit tomb, and the orange glow of the city below.

The trail brought me towards the huge transmitters at Three Rock. Writing in 1780, the artist Gabriel Beranger reckoned the mountain’s distinctive rock clusters were altars built to offer sacrifices. They are, in fact, natural granite formations.

But I was in trouble: the walk had taken longer than planned and the sky was blackening, so I donned a headlamp and high-vis jacket to descend Ticknock forest in the dark. The final stretch into Glencullen on country roads in the dark was the most treacherous bit of my walk – without a headlamp I’d have been in serious trouble.

The lesson? Walking from Tallaght to Glencullen is probably too much at this time of year – if you want to walk this route in winter, tackle it over multiple days, or just pick a sub-section.

Dublin Mountains Way

Map : Get trail maps from dublinmountains.ie (the DMW route can change). OSI Discovery Series Map 50 covers the area but shows an old DMW route. East West Mapping also publishes Dublin Mountains map.

Start : DMW trailhead in Seán Walsh Park off Kiltipper Road, a short walk from the Tallaght Luas stop. Or start anywhere along the route.

Finish : Johnny Foxes pub, Glencullen.

Time and distance : Tallaght to Glencullen is 20 miles with lots of ascending. Seven to 10 hours.

Route : Walking Tallaght-Glencullen in daylight during winter is a big challenge. Suitability: Bring food, water, rain gear and warm clothes, hiking boots, map, compass, high vis clothing and a torch/head lamp.

Take a walk on the Grand side

LENNY ANTONELLI walks a quiet section of the Grand Canal in Kildare

Irish Times, 15 December 2012

The Grand Canal Way is a rarity in Ireland: a long-distance walk that’s almost entirely off-road, stretching from Adamstown in west Dublin to Shannon Harbour, Co Offaly.

The section between Hazelhatch and Sallins is a perfect microcosm of it – a half day’s walk between two towns serviced by a railway whose own history is entangled in that of the canal.

I set out from Hazelhatch, where houseboats line the channel. This must be Dublin’s most chaotic and inspiriting row of homes: the barges are cream, red and highlighter blue, fat and slim, tall and squat. The towpath is decorated with bicycles, tables, old kayaks, wheelie bins, solar panels and wooden sculptures. Smoke rises from their chimneys, but nobody emerges from below deck, so I walk on.

Work began on the Grand Canal in 1756 in Clondalkin. But progress was slow, and it took more than two decades before the 20km channel to Sallins was open. Further west, the immense Bog of Allen almost sunk the project when clay walls built to support it failed. The Grand Canal finally reached the Shannon in 1803, but the age of fast rail travel was looming.

For those who normally walk the mountains or coast, the canal is an entirely different creature. While hillwalking is adventurous, canal-walking is ponderous – you needn’t worry about navigation or the terrain here, the towpath just carries you endlessly forwards. But our canals play a crucial ecological role, linking up rivers and lakes that would otherwise be isolated. And their landscape makes you pay attention for its subtler rewards, like a moorhen hiding in the sedges, or bubbles breaking on the water’s surface, perhaps released by a tench eating grubs on the floor of the canal.

Like a forgotten thoroughfare it sneaks behind fields and country estates. It’s hidden from Kildare’s modern commuter towns, and has an architecture all of its own. I passed steep stone bridges, derelict lock-keeper’s cottages, and an old canal-side church and school at Ardclough. I walked by the old Lyons demesne, with its immense Georgian manor, and Oughterard, where Arthur Guinness is buried and Daniel O’Connell killed John D’Esterre in a pistol duel in 1815. Bring a map though: often these features are behind high walls or rows of ivy-wrapped trees.

About half way to Sallins, the light started to disintegrate. Colour drained from the landscape, leaving only the black trees and the shadows they cast on the inky water. Walking in the half-light was thrilling, though, and dead silent except when my presence sent terrified birds screaming from the trees.

Soon I passed under the railway bridge just before Sallins. The Grand Canal Company fought the building of the railways, and this bridge proved pivotal: once the Great Southern and Western Railway Company won the right to bridge the canal in the 1840s, the rail network could stretch out to Cork, Limerick and Galway. Just two decades later, the mass transport of people and goods on the canal was finished.

WALK THE GRAND CANAL WAY

Map : OSI, Discovery Series, Sheets 49 and 50. Downloadable maps of the Grand Canal Way at  (see also for train times).

Start : Hazlehatch Bridge, 600m from Hazelhatch and Celbridge rail station.

Finish : Trail ends at Sallins.

Time and distance : 12.6km. Takes four hours if you want to explore slowly.

Suitability : Easy. Bring food, water and warm, waterproof clothes and footwear.

Rail services: On the Dublin-Kildare line, with trains leaving Heuston station frequently.

The waters and the wild

LENNY ANTONELLI encounters a trout river and deceiving mushrooms

Irish Times, 24 November 2012

The terrain between the northern end of Lough Corrib and the mountains of Connemara is tough to categorise. It’s a place where flat lakeland meets quartzite peaks, yet it doesn’t belong to either. The region’s folding plateaus are softer and greener than the neighbouring mountains, yet more complex and cryptic, and less walked. The stretch of the Western Way between Curraun Beg and Maam Cross offers an easy introduction to this zone of transition. Right at the end of a cul de sac winding 13km from Oughterard, the trailhead is a remote spot with few houses and a patchwork of field and forest that includes modern plantation and scraps of old woodland. The electricity network didn’t stretch here until 1975. The car park looks across a narrow neck of the lake towards the sessile oak woodland on the Hill of Doon.

The trail goes west along the boreen under Curraun Hill, past the ruins of a 19th century national school, and into a mossy conifer plantation. Hop over the stile at the end of the forest and on to the open bog.

Heading towards Lackavrea mountain, the trail crosses a footbridge and enters a vast conifer plantation near a townland known as Doirín na gCos Fuar – the small wood of the cold feet. According to cartographer Tim Robinson, local folklore says a herdsman was killed by a bull here, and all that was found of him was his feet. But Robinson says the term “cosa fuara” also referred to poor people, or newcomers to an area, so the name could have a more prosaic explanation.

The trail follows the Falamer river, where brown trout spawn in autumn and winter. The females excavate nests in the gravel bed of the river, then lays eggs that are immediately fertilised by the male. The female covers the nest, known as a redd, and the fish that hatch in spring will spend a year or so here before migrating downstream to Lough Corrib.

After the trail leaves the river, the rest of the walk to the Maam valley is a fairly dull slog through the plantation, so you could turn back now. But I decided to persevere, and the abundance of mushrooms growing beside the boardwalk was enough to hold my interest, their names as curious as their shapes and textures: the deceiver, the sulphur tuft, the sickener.

Lackavrea mountain appears through gaps in the forest. This is a rough and complex mountain, as indicated by its Irish name Leic Aimhreidh, the rugged rock-slab. The trail eventually leaves the forest over a footbridge, crosses the bog and emerges onto the road under the Maamturk mountains.

Oscar Wilde’s father William wrote about a similar journey, from the lakeland into the mountains, in his book Lough Corrib: Its shores and islands, but by boat instead of on foot.

“Steering through the narrow intricate passage under the wooded promontory of Doon, we literally leave Lough Corrib and the scenery of Mayo behind us, and pass into another region, grander, wilder and more romantic,” he wrote.

WALK LACKAVREA FOREST, CO GALWAY

Map : Ordnance Survey Ireland, Discovery Series, Sheet 45

Start: Car park at Hill of Doon viewpoint

Finish : The trail emerges onto the R336 between Maam Cross and Maam village.

Time and distance: The full linear walk is about 9km and takes about three hours.

Suitability: Easy to moderate. Map, waterproof boots, warm clothes, rain gear, food and water essential.

Dizzying Donegal

LENNY ANTONELLI explores the seascapes of Gleann Cholm Cille

Irish Times, 27 October 2012

DRIVING IN FROM the bog above, Gleann Cholm Cille appears like a Greenlandic outpost, a scatter of low buildings enclosed by sea and mountain. A web of bog tracks takes you into the hills north of the village – a branch from one leads to an early 19th-century lookout tower, on the 220m cliffs at Glen Head.

Local teacher Thomas McGinley found this height too great to comprehend the sea below. “Both vision and hearing fail . . . at this awful altitude,” he wrote.  McGinley walked this coast in the 19th century, documenting its wildlife and history. The Derry Journal published his notes weekly under the pen-name Kinnfaela, and later collected them in a book The Cliff Scenery of South Western Donegal.

I abandon the trail at the tower and follow the coast. Soon the cliffs indent sharply and the ground drops steeply to a small valley – move inland to cross the valley safely and rejoin the cliffs on the other side.

Up ahead the coast cuts out to sea at a right angle – this is the Sturrall, a vertical headland where locals once picked edible rock samphire, McGinley wrote. Some even descended the cliff to gather seaweed on the shore far below.

His book tells the story of a rector’s son who planned to swipe eggs from an eagle’s nest on the Sturrall. Locals warned against it, but this hardened the lad’s ambition, and he raved about the idea in his sleep. One night he sleepwalked up to the cliffs and strode out the Sturrall through wind and rain. The next morning he told his mother he had dreamt of robbing the nest, and she promptly handed him the eggs he’d brought back in the night.

Following the cliffs, the terrain shifts from dry heather to muddy bog to a forest of dead ferns. Two choughs let out laser-like calls above me – these red-billed crows live along our western coasts, but their numbers are declining.

Soon a track leads down to the shore at Port, a ruined settlement that was home to a few shepherds during the 19th century. Nearby in 1870 a storm sunk the Sydney, a cargo ship taking timber from Quebec to Scotland. Four of the 19 dead are buried at Port.

I climb up Port Hill along the cliffs for a view of Tormore, Ireland’s highest sea stack. Local folklorist Seán O’Heochaidh told a story of the stack: Jack Mór climbed it to hunt seabirds during the famine. He met another man on the same mission, and both filled their bags with birds. But Jack Mór weakened on his way down and couldn’t carry on. The other man went for help, but a great storm blew in. Jack Mór was stranded for a fortnight. When his rescuers arrived, there was nothing left of Jack but his bones. It was said these could still be seen on the side of Tormore 70 years later.

Daylight was against me and it was time to head back down to Port, where the bog track offers a different return route to Gleann Cholm Cille. Since setting out, the valleys had grown progressively more remote: first Gleann Cholm Cille itself, then the backwater of Port, and now ahead of me was Glenlough, with ruined cottages that no road reaches.

The American painter, Rockwell Kent, stayed at Glenlough in 1926 while painting this coast. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, spent a summer there too, trying to wean himself off alcohol by walking and writing. But the black nights and isolation got to him, and in letters to a friend he recalled encounters with Count Antigarlic, “a strange Hungarian gentleman . . . coming down the hill in a cloak lined with spiders”. The local poitín may have gone to his head.

Map: Ordnance Survey Ireland, Discovery Series, Sheet 10.

Start finish: We parked in the townland of Beefan, just north of the village, joining the bog track around grid reference G 524 858.

Route: My walk followed sections of various official trails, starting on the Tower Loop. The bog track from Port back to Glencolmcille is part of the long distance Slí Cholmcille, and also joins the local Drum Loop. Seeirishtrails.iefor details.

There is a map board of local loops at the walking centre in the village. Do not attempt a shortcut back to the start point by going off trail across Beefan and Garveross Mountain – its south face is extremely steep.

Suitability: Inexperienced walkers should keep to the marked trails and avoid open mountain and cliff. Utmost care and attention required. Stay inside the intermittent fence. Map, warm clothes, good boots, rain gear, packed lunch, food and water needed. Compass and navigation skills required if heading off trail.

Time: Six to seven hours for my route, or four for both local loops.

Distance: My route was about 19km. Combing both local loops is 13km.

Services: Shop, food and accommodation in Glencolmcille.

The Blasket Islands

Irish Times, 29 September 2012

LENNY ANTONELLI walks Great Blasket and its lesser-known smaller cousins

OF ALL IRISH islands, Inishnabro offers its rare visitor the grandest entrance. We climb from our ferry into a dinghy and search for a landing spot among the steep rock. Suddenly a sea arch appears, and our boatman steers through it to a hidden cove. We hop out onto the wet rock and up a steep gully to the grassy slopes above.

Inishnabro is one of the Blasket Islands, those last half-drowned scraps of Ireland before the open Atlantic. Much has been written about Great Blasket, home to authors Peig Sayers and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, which was evacuated in 1953. But little is said of neighbouring islands such as Inishnabro and Inishtooskert.

Without animals to graze it, Inishnabro’s flora seems primeval, a kaleidoscope of colour and texture unseen elsewhere. Its upper slopes are thick with purple heather, spongy sea pink and yellow goldenrod. We hike to the 175m summit, on the north face where the land drops into the sea in a kilometre-long stretch of grassy cliffs.

In 1973, private space flight pioneer Gary Hudson proposed building a spacecraft launchpad here, and said the idea was backed by an astronaut “who walked on the moon”. But according to a memo, a Department of Foreign Affairs official feared the idea could be a “gigantic leg pull”.

But we can’t linger here – we must get to the next island before sea conditions get worse. At Inishtooskert we land on the steep, rocky shore. The odd sight of strangers sends sheep, which are grazing above us, scurrying up a precipitous ridge.

In his book The Blaskets: A Kerry Island Library, Muiris Mac Conghail describes how sheep were taken off Inishtooskert. The men would “pull and and jump with the sheep down the cliff edge, almost becoming in the act sheep themselves”, then embark on the “long row home with a heavy boat with up to 15 sheep tied together”.

We hike up to the island’s highest point, a 172m north-facing cliff, then down to an early Christian oratory and beehive hut, on the south slopes, whose past is grizzly. Tomás and Peig O Catháin were living here around 1850 when a storm cut the island off for six weeks. Tomás died and his body putrified, but his wife was too weak to remove the corpse. There was no other shelter on the island, so she dismembered the body and removed the pieces.

When neighbours from Great Blasket could finally visit, the “woman was alone, nearly dead from hunger, and a maniac”, wrote archaeologist George Du Noyer.

Our boat drops us at Great Blasket next, near the sands of An Trá Bán. The island is essentially a long mountain ridge, and green roads let you explore its wild spine.

Great Blasket’s summit lies near its remote western tip, out of sight of any civilisation, modern or extinct.

From here you have a clear view to the sheer pyramid of Tearaght, the most westerly Blasket and Ireland’s most westerly island, with a lighthouse that clings for dear life to the cliff face.

Tearaght “appears as an astonishing distant rock”, wrote Joan and Ray Stagles in The Blasket Islands: Next Parish America. “More fantasy than reality, far out in the Atlantic, a final punctuation mark to Europe.”

Blaskets

Map : Ordnance Survey Discovery Series 70.

Getting there: Various boat operators including blasketislands.ie, dinglebaycharters.ie

Routes: Inishnabro and Inishtooskert are small so finding the highest point is straightforward. To get to the Great Blasket summit follow the green roads from the village west to Slievedonagh and walk the island’s ridge.

Distance and time: About 12km on the three islands: roughly four hours on the islands and six at sea. Suitability: Our boatman insisted he would only land experienced walkers here.

Photo available from Wikimedia Commons and may be reused according to terms of GNU Free Documentation License

Middle ground

There’s an allure on this Aran island that is hard to grasp, writes LENNY ANTONELLI

Irish Times, 25 August, 2012

DAY TRIPPERS HEAD FOR Inis Mór. Those seeking the road less travelled usually go to Inis Oirr. Few go to Inis Meáin. The island seems happy to keep it that way. The island is, of course, a Gaeltacht island. The academic AJ Hughes wrote that Inis Meáin was one of the only places he “found people who could not speak English” during his travels through the Gaeltacht in the 1990s.

After I got off the ferry, a car with a trailer full of passengers pulled up. “Want a lift?” the driver asked. I had to decline – I was here to walk.

Leaving the pier I went west above the beach, then turned on to a boreen through the labyrinth of stone walls and up to the main settlement. Dozens of five-spot burnet moths, with red spots on black wings, flew around. I headed west on the island’s main road, past JM Synge’s old cottage retreat – open to visitors during the summer – and Dún Chonchúir, a huge hillfort that I had all to myself.

It’s wise to pick up cartographer Tim Robinson’s meticulously drawn map of the islands before you go – it names every cliff, inlet and headland cut from the coast of dark limestone.

The main road climbs and ends where a path through the fields leads to Synge’s Chair, a stone shelter the writer frequented above the cliffs. I turned south here, walking between the patchwork of fields and a huge embankment of shattered limestone that had been cleared from the land.

I climbed over the rocks to find a wide pavement above the black cliffs. Here, on the island’s most desolate corner, you can engage in what Synge called “the wild pastimes of the cliff, and to become a companion of the cormorants and crows”.

Follow the coast south, but watch out: the rock can be slippery, and the cliffs overhang.

The cliffs turn to shoreline after you turn the island’s southwest corner, heading towards the windfarm that powers the island’s desalination plant. The poet Dara Beag Ó Flatharta sees the turbines as enhancing the island’s beauty, like “‘feathers in the hats of ladies at the Galway races”.

Herring gulls patrolled the coast, and the limestone was littered with their handiwork: crushed purple urchins and huge discarded crab legs. I followed a faint trail near the stone walls to avoid the wet rock. No sunshine pierced the clouds, and on days like this in limestone country, the sea, rock and sky bounce greyness off each other.

But there is plenty of colour. Past the windfarm, I turned at a walking marker on to Bóthar na gCreag, a grassy boreen surrounded by green fields splashed with the red, purple, yellow and blue of the wildflowers. I followed the track through a complex of stone walls – some taller than me – and up to the island’s other fort, Dún Fearbhai, just above the main settlement. Then it was time to head back for the ferry.

The allure of Inis Meáin can be difficult to grasp. It is, essentially, a flat grey rock. But when you leave you find yourself being drawn back to the place, almost subconsciously.

Synge found a “tawdry medley of all that is crudest in modern life” back in urban Galway after he left the island. “I have come out . . . to stroll along the edge of Galway Bay and look out in the direction of the islands,” he wrote. “The sort of yearning I feel towards those lonely rocks is indescribably acute.”

Inis Meáin

Start and finish : The pier, Inis Meáin

Distance : About 13km

Time : Four to five hours – maybe too long for a day trip, but you could get a taxi between the pier and the main settlement, and back again.

Suitability : Moderate. Avoid cliffs and remote coast in rough weather. The limestone pavement can be tough underfoot; proceed carefully near the cliffs. Bring a good map, boots, rain gear and plenty of food and water.

Map : Oileáin Arann map, produced by Tim Robinson (Folding Landscapes); OS Ireland, Discovery series, sheet 51.

Route : This is a shorter version of one in Paddy Dillon’s book Irish Coastal Walks. There are also waymarked walks that follow the boreens through the island’s interior.

Food and services : There is a shop, pub, restaurant, cafe and accommodation, but many services are seasonal.

Turkish delight

LENNY ANTONELLI takes a ramble around one of the west’s wildest islands

Irish Times, 21 July, 2012

SHEER ISOLATION SETS Inishturk apart; 14 kilometers by ferry, it’s one of our most remote outposts. Just 53 people live on the island all year round. You’ll find no sweater stores, pony-and-trap tours or interpretive centres.

The island’s western side is an expanse of rocky grassland and cliff-top that can only be explored on foot. Two looped trails leave the harbour, with it’s blue-green waters and cluster of cottages. We followed the signposts up the hill and through a gate, then went up the slope to the right for a quick lookout – sheer cliffs dropped 80 metres to the sea below us. Bring binoculars: the island’s cliffs are home to peregrine falcons, puffins, fulmars and chough.

We followed the purple trail west past lonely Lough Coolaknick (the green trail heads south here), then left it to hike to the old signal tower on the hill above – one of dozens built by the British to warn of any invasion from Napoleon’s armies in the early 19th century. At 191 metres it’s the island’s highest point, with a wide panorama of the mountains and islands of west Mayo and Connemara.

Inishturk has been inhabited on and off since 4,000 BC. After the famine, the island’s landlord, Lord Lucan, sent a gunboat with armed bailiffs to evict the islanders and knock their houses when they couldn’t pay rents. But Mayo MP Ousley Higgins fought for the islanders, and they gradually returned to rebuild their homes.

Descend back to the purple trail – marked by stone slabs across open grassland – and follow it west to a viewing point, where Atlantic waves batter huge cliffs and sharp sea stacks. The sun shone on our backs here as dozens of fulmars circled above the void, almost within touching distance.

Rather than take the purple trail inland we followed the wild cliffs heading southwest.This is the tricky part: the bumpy landscape makes it difficult to see the edge, which cuts in and out sharply. One minute I thought I was safely inland, the next I was right on the precipice.

The rough tracks here run perilously close to the overhanging edge – ignore them and follow the coast from further inland. There are steep sections there too, so be ready for a little scrambling.

We walked out to Dromore Head, then followed a stream inland past marshy Lough Namucka to a stone wall, which we followed left up a hillside. Marshy terrain must be negotiated in places here, but the ground offers a medley of wildflowers. Stay with the wall as it rejoins both marked trails and arrives at the island’s GAA pitch – cut deep into the rocky hillside – then follow the only boreen southwards.

A mining firm found gold on Inishturk in 1990, but the islanders chose not to disturb their quiet home. The Irish Times reported that the company’s geologists were “politely told not to come back to the island again”.

We took a short detour off-trail to Portdoon, a clear lagoon accessed by a steep channel through cliffs to the sea. Folklore says that Danish pirates hid their galleys here, waiting to ambush unsuspecting boats. The pirates were said to be the last people in Ireland who knew the secret of brewing a legendary beer made from heather.

Heading back towards the harbour on the trail, we stopped in the community club for tea. It was sunny enough for one last stop before the harbour: sandy Corraun beach for a quick swim. Then it was back to the ferry for the bumpy hour-long journey home, just ourselves and a couple of islanders sailing under the evening sun towards rainy mainland mountains.

Inishturk, Co Mayo

Map: OSI. Discovery Series. Sheet 37.

Getting there: O’Grady Ferries operates between Inishturk and Roonagh Pier in west Mayo every morning and evening. See clareislandferry.comfor timetables. From Westport take the R335 west to Louisburgh, go through the village and after about a quarter mile take a right turn signposted for Roonagh.

Start and finish: The harbour, Inishturk.

Distance: About 11km.

Time: A leisurely four to five hours

Suitability: Moderate.

Food and services: There is a shop, pub and post office, B&Bs that serve dinner, and self-catering options.

Further information: inishturkisland.com. Information on the marked trails at irishtrails.ie 

Stranger in a strange land

LENNY ANTONELLI takes a ramble through the empty lunar landscape of the east Burren

Irish Times, 7 July, 2012

DO HILLWALKERS SHUN the Burren? We tend to think the only hiking destinations around these parts are in Connemara or Mayo. Sure there’s no mountains in the Burren. But walking here is unlike anywhere in Ireland – the wildlife-rich limestone is the perfect antidote to our other soggy brown hills.

The tour buses head west towards the Cliffs of Moher, but I went east instead to 326m Slieve Carran, known for its steep cliffs. A warren of tiny boreens criss-crosses the bare limestone landscape, and there’s barely a house. Just try giving directions out here. “Never have you been in stranger country,” Irish naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote of this part of the Burren. I set out from the car park at Slieve Carran and followed the trail through a gate. Those seeking a relaxed casual ramble can take the 2.5km looped walk that circles through limestone pavement, hazel woodland and wildflower-rich grassland in a section of Burren National Park. It also visits the oratory and cave at the base of the cliff, said to have been a 7th century hermitage for St Colman Mac Duagh. With its moss-covered woodland and clear spring, it’s quite the retreat.

But I veered off the trail and up the hill left of the cliffs. This was trickier than it looked: hazel thicket blocked my path, and when I found a way through I had to scramble up a wall of rock. Soon the going got easier. Hares darted up the mountain. Early purple orchids and spring gentians were in bloom, and the strange lunar ridge of the Turloughmore hills to the east dominated my view.

I ducked under a wire fence, and over a dry stone wall that I followed northeast above the cliffs until I spotted the giant cairn on the summit to the west. Once there, I could see the mountains of Connemara across Galway Bay, and east into the Slieve Aughty hills.

I once tried to make a loop down from the summit north of the cliffs to the limestone pavement and car park below. But I was blocked by a mix of hazel thicket, farmland and steep ground, and I emerged bruised from dense scrubland. “There is a way down there, but you really have to know where you’re going,” a walker I met on top said. If you want to go back to the car park from the summit, best return the way you came. This time I ventured deeper into the grey hills, heading for a stone wall running northwest to the next hill. A herd of wild goats saw me and scurried. The going got tough as the grass vanished, and I skipped over deep fissures in the limestone. I spotted mossy carpet and thought it would make easier terrain; instead my leg plunged a metre down a crevice hidden below.

Three hundred and fifty million years ago, most of Ireland was bathed in tropical seas. The calcium-rich remains of animals such as corals, crinoids and sea urchins fell to the sea floor and compressed over the eons to form this limestone. Recent ice ages stripped surface soils and shales, smoothed the hills and scooped out the valleys. Meltwater and rain worked away at weak points in the rock to create fissures and caves.

I didn’t have time to take in the summit of Turlough Hill to the west, so I aimed north for the third hill on my route, Slieve Oughtmama. I kept following the dry stone wall – which marks the Clare-Galway border – to this final summit. The glassy surface of Galway Bay mirrored the blue sky. The landscape was divided sharply between grey hills, lime valleys and the azure bay.

I followed the stone wall down the limestone ridge towards my end point on the N67 by the coast. But the crevices were deeper than ever now, the rocks further apart, and the stone looser. A common lizard scurried under a rock. I stared deep into a dark fissure at ferns and wildflowers growing down below. This is strange country indeed.

Burren Beo Trust, burrenbeo.com

East Burren, Co Clare

Map: Ordnance Survey. Discovery Series. Sheet 52 for Slieve Carran. Sheet 51 for rest of walk.

Start: Car park at Slieve Carran, northwest of Carran village, Co Clare. Grid reference M 333 034. Heading west from Kinvara take the first left immediately after the town onto the Moy Road. Continue for about 7km, taking the first right after the crossroads. The car park is about 1km down on the right.

Finish: N67 at Abbey Hill between Kinvara and Ballyvaughan. There is also a looped walk marked from the Slieve Carran car park and Tony Kirby’s book The Burren Aran Islands: A Walking Guide also details another loop in the area.

Distance : 9km.

Time: Four hours.

Suitability : Moderate to strenuous for the full route. Involves some scrambling and hopping stone walls, and the terrain can be demanding. Watch out for hidden crevices and sudden cliffs. You will probably encounter horses and cattle en route, so give them a wide berth. Bring rain gear, warm clothes, map, compass, food, phone and fluids. Sturdy boots essential.

Food and services: Shop and pub at Bellharbour, a few miles west of my end point. More services in Kinvara, Gort, Corofin and Ballyvaughan.

Further information : Information on marked trails from Burren National Park, burrennationalpark.ie.

The quieter side

LENNY ANTONELLI finds a quieter way up Ireland’s busiest mountain

The Irish Times, 26 May, 2012

DSC_0047

THERE’S MORE TO Croagh Patrick than the slog for repentance up the old track from Murrisk to redemption at the summit. If it’s solitude you seek, you could traverse the entire range of hills.

The Reek – as she’s known locally – sits dead centre of a ridge with lower hills both sides. Hiking the whole range offers one of the best walks in the west, but the traditional way up is so popular few consider it. On a clear day we followed an off-road section of the Western Way outside Westport until we reached a gap leading on to open mountainside. Ignoring the markers heading northwest, we hiked to the first spot height in the range of 456m, hopping a stone wall on the way.

The view grabs you instantly: south to isolated brown hills and valleys of Partry, Maumstrasna and Sheeffry and north over Clew bay to the mountains beyond. Croagh Patrick forms the southern end of the huge ice-carved valley that is Clew Bay, with the Nephin Beg mountains on the other side, and drumlins left by the ice forming the bay’s clustered islands.

We headed west through the heather on grassy mountainside towards the next spot height of 500m. The terrain was soft and springy – nothing like what lay ahead. In the distance, swarms of walkers scurried up and down Croagh Patrick. We joined a narrow track on the south side of the hills, heading towards them.

When we hit the main, path dozens of pilgrims were heading up and down. “Charity walk,” one told us. “You just missed Enda Kenny and Trapattoni.” Kids ran down the scree as we struggled up, our first time climbing the Reek. Soon the track got steeper, the rock looser and the crowds denser.

There was nowhere to rest. Descending walkers sent rocks hurtling towards us. “It was lovely back there,” my hiking companion said. “But this feels a bit like a building site.”

But from the summit it’s obvious why this mountain has been a site of ritual since pre-Christian times. The view from the austere peak – over Clew Bay, the mountains of Mayo and the islands of Clare and Inishturk – is one of the country’s best. Cold northerly winds blasted the peak. A man wearing just a vest began circling the chapel on the summit, but we didn’t have time to see if he went around the traditional 15 times.

Rather than head down the main track, we carried on west towards our final summit, Ben Goram. The descent on this side of Croagh Patrick is full of loose rock too, so make it a slow one.

A wall of rain descended on the Partry Mountains to the south, but the skies above us were clear blue. Soon we were back on the dry moss and heather, descending to a low pass before going up to 559m Ben Goram. A paraglider sailed through the skies over the bay.

We lingered on the hillside, but as the sun went down behind Clare Island we descended the gradual ridge northwest from the summit of Ben Goram. Watch your footing closely on the steep terrain here. We arrived back to a boreen west of Lecanvey, a good spot to leave a second car. Or you could check beforehand to see if there’s a 450 bus heading to Westport, which could leave you near the start point.

Locals in the pub afterwards were discussing whether Trapattoni had made it all the way up; he didn’t. It turns out the FAI scheduled a press conference at the visitor centre for 15 minutes after the walk started, so Trap reluctantly turned back.

I found myself thinking of the stark contrast between Croagh Patrick and the hills around it – from a gruelling cone of loose rock to green, grassy hillsides.

Just then, a woman at the bar interrupted the talk of how tough the climb is. “Ah sure, I climbed the Reek last year,” she said. “And I’m only 74.”

Croagh Patrick ridge walk, Mayo

Map : Ordnance Survey of Ireland. Discovery Series. These hills are at the intersection of four maps: 30, 31, 37, 38. If you follow the route described, you’ll need all bar 38.

Start : Take the R335 from Westport towards Louisburgh. Turn left just after the petrol station and bridge in Belclare. Then take the second right until you reach a waymarker for the Western Way at a gate on the left. Grid reference L 949 809.

Route : Take the trail until you reach a ladder on the right that brings you on to open mountain. Rather than follow markers for the Croagh Patrick Heritage Trail, aim for the first spot height of 456m. For easy navigation you could follow the stone wall that runs on the south face of these hills, marked on the OS map (31) as “Pilgrim’s Walk”.

Finish : Heading west from Westport on the R335, take the first left after Lecanvey village, then the first left again. You should find parking here. Grid reference L 876 804.

Suitability : Moderate except for the tough ascent of Croagh Patrick. Walking poles are ideal. The mountainside is often misty, so you must know how to navigate.

Time : 4-6 hours.

Distance : 10km.

Services : Westport. Food, hot showers and lockers at Croagh Patrick Visitor Centre in Murrisk. Pubs in Murrisk and Lecanvey.

Half of new homes fail energy efficiency rules

By Lenny Antonelli & Jeff Colley

The Sunday Times (Irish edition), 20 May, 2012

More than half of new Irish homes fail to meet energy efficiency and carbon emissions regulations, according to new figures. The number of new homes meeting the rules has also declined dramatically since 2005, according to data released by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.

The figures show 50% of homes fail to meet energy performance rules, 40% fail to meet carbon emission standards, and 39% don't generate enough renewable energy to meet regulations.

The data, which contains a record of the energy performance of every new home given a building energy rating (BER) assessment, was obtained by the green building magazine Construct Ireland.

Of the 3,595 BER assessments carried out on houses built to the 2008 version of Part L of the building regulations, which deals with insulation and energy, 1,946 — or 54% — fail at least one of the three main standards.

This marked a dramatic increase from the 21% of homes built to the 2005 regulations that failed to meet its main requirements. Part L was updated again last far, but few homes have been built to this new version.

Environment minister Phil Hogan recently published a new draft Building Control Act following the high profile evacuation of the Priory Hall development in north Dublin due to fire safety defects. The new rules require the submission of "certificates of compliance" for the design and construction of buildings.

However in a lengthy submission former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland Eoin O'Cofaigh heavily criticised the proposals. He said the regulations would "criminalise" architects for the failure of local authorities to inspect buildings, and for the failure of other contractors on site. Local authorities currently have a target to inspect just 12-15% of new buildings.

Mr O'Cofaigh, a former member for the Building Regulations Advisory Body, said the proposals were the "21st century equivalent of hanging children for stealing sheep."

Last year Construct Irelandrevealed that an unpublished survey of Irish housing built between 1997 and 2002 commissioned by the SEAI found that none of the houses examined complied fully with energy efficiency regulations. Over 90% of of homes with oil boilers failed to comply with rules on reducing the risk of fire spread and pollution from oil tanks, while over 40% failed to meet ventilation standards.

Infra red photography of housing conducted as part of the survey found that 19 out of 20 houses had gaps in insulation, in contravention of the regulations, that were not revealed by basic visual inspections. This suggest the number of homes failing to meet insulation standards today could be higher than the latest SEAI data indicates, as BER assessors typically assume on-paper specifications are correct if they can't access insulation.

SEAI is planning to release a public research tool to enable users to study the BER data it has collected. The next issue of Construct Ireland magazine will contain further analysis of the latest figures. The Department of Environment did not respond to a request for comment from The Sunday Times in time for print.

This is the original version of the story we submitted as opposed to the final version that appeared in the Sunday Times, as their edit is not available online. 

Untamed Achill

LENNY ANTONELLI takes a clifftop walk in one of the country’s wildest corners on Achill

 Irish Times, 31 March, 2012

ACHILL’S BEEN in the news so much for developer Joe McNamara’s Stonehenge imitation it’s easy to forget the wildest thing about the island isn’t the planning, but the intoxicating landscape. The most untamed terrain here is the island’s western corner, which wowed the English travel writer J Harris Stone in 1906 with its “sheer frowning precipices, no less than two thousand feet in height, and chaotically disarranged boulders of giant proportions, round which the Atlantic rollers fume and smoke”.

I set out from Keem strand, a sheltered cove with blue-green waters surrounded by steep hills, and the likely setting of Paul Henry’s painting Launching the Currach. Above the beach lie the remains of Captain Charles Boycott’s estate. When his house here was burned down, he built another on the opposite side of Croaghaun mountain. The remains of an altar where Catholic priests said secret Mass during penal times are here too.

From the car park, hike the steep 200m to the second World War lookout on the hill above. The climb is tough, but it’s the most challenging part of an otherwise moderate walk. You’ll be greeted on top by the jagged Benmore cliffs that drop into the Atlantic below.

Keem Bay was home to a major basking shark fishery between 1950 and 1975. A lookout would stalk the sharks from the headland, directing fisherman in their currachs who would sneak up on the giants of the ocean and kill them with the jab of a lance behind the head. The fishery landed more than 12,000 of the species between 1950 and 1975.

Heading away from Keem, follow the line of cliffs towards Achill Head, the island’s western tip. Some faint trails have been etched out, but they can be tricky to follow. The cliff edge overhangs in places too, so keep well back, perhaps following the intermittent sod barrier.

Perched on a clifftop above the empty Atlantic on the edge of Europe, the weather here can change in moments. As I walked along, mist rapidly rose up and over the cliffs, fogging up the valley below. Pick a clear day to tackle this one.

As you near the back of the island, the vastness of the landscape reveals itself. The cliffs below stretch a mile out to Achill Head. The empty valley lies pockmarked with lakes and, on the other side, Croaghaun drops 688m into the sea, making it three times higher than the Cliffs of Moher and one of Europe’s highest sea cliffs. The Mullet Peninsula lies to the northeast, with Clare Island, Inishturk and the mountains of Mayo and Galway to the south.

Make a gradual descent to the stone ruins on the valley floor. These are the remains of the deserted booley village of Bunowna, a summer settlement for herders who would bring their livestock here to graze. The terrain here is wet and boggy, so cross the valley and make your way back to Keem on higher ground. The isolation is splendid; just over an hour from the car park, you find yourself in one of Ireland’s wildest spots.

As I neared Keem, mist descended on the valley. Sheep appeared and quickly disappeared in the fog, and I heard ravens circling overhead. Suddenly, four birds swooped in front of me, crossing the valley, before the fog consumed them again as I made the final descent back to the beach.

Start and finish: Car park at Keem strand. To get to Achill, follow signs to Newport from either Westport or Castlebar. From Newport take the N59 to Mulranny, then take the R319 all the way to Keem at the western end of Achill, passing through the villages of Achill Sound, Keel and Dooagh.

Time: 2-3 hours.

Distance: 7km.

Map: Ordnance Survey Discovery Series, sheet 30.

Suitability: Moderate. By far the most challenging part of the walk is the initial steep climb to the clifftop.

Good boots and waterproofs are essential though, as the terrain can be very boggy, particular on the valley floor, and the weather can change quickly, with strong winds and fog posing obvious risks. Watch your footing closely on the cliffs.

Food and services: Shops, pubs and accommodation in Dooagh and Keel villages.

Further information:achilltourism.com/hillwalking

Out of the woods

A walk along Lough Mask offers rich rewards, writes LENNY ANTONELLI

Irish Times, 23 March 2012

WALKERS HEADING to the mountains of Galway and Mayo could easily overlook the isthmus between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, but this narrow neck of land offers big rewards to those who explore it. There’s excellent walking around the villages of Cong, Clonbur and Cornamona, on lakeshore, woodland and hillside trails. On a mild March morning I set off from Cong Abbey, on the edge of the village. The mixed woodland here boasts a warren of trails and impressive trees, including redwoods and sequoias. Lord Ardilaun – a member of the Guinness family best known for donating St Stephen’s Green to the public – planted many of them, and most trails here run through his family’s old estate.

The track to Clonbur winds around the forest and through old stone tunnels before entering Clonbur Wood. Signs of large-scale tree harvesting are apparent here, but you should aim for the superb northern end of the wood.

You’ll come to a Y-junction at an information sign where the leftwards trail heads for Clonbur: take the right instead. This brings you to the limestone pavement on Lough Mask’s southern shore, the largest example of this habitat in Ireland outside the Burren. The habitat is a patchwork of shrubs, trees, wetland and open limestone pavement. A Coillte project has restored 550 hectares (1,360 acres) of woodland, removing exotic species in favour of native vegetation.

Don’t miss the superb signposted detour around White Island, where the track hugs the shores of Lough Mask. I stopped for lunch on a limestone clearing at the water’s edge. Sailors on the lake in the distance were the first people I’d seen since leaving Cong two hours before.

Leaving White Island, you can follow paths back to Cong through the same woods. You could turn right on a trail south of the R300 marked for Ard na Gaoithe Forest, a pleasant mixed woodland with trails along the shore of Lough Corrib, and a safe swimming area. But the biggest attraction lies further west. The Seanbóthar is a little-known 10km (6.2-mile) trail that follows the old road from Clonbur to Cornamona, and it’s one of the best paved trails in Ireland.

From Clonbur Wood follow signs for the village or the cemetery outside it. From Clonbur join the road to Cornamona and take the second right. When you come to a T-junction go right again. Soon the road becomes a car-free path.

The Seanbóthar winds across the southern flanks of Benlevy (also known as Mount Gable, 416m/1,365ft), crossing stone-walled fields that extend up the hillside. There are excellent views over Lough Corrib and its countless islands.

The remote hills and valleys of Joyce Country, named after a Welsh family that settled here in the 13th century, open up before you marking the transition from a landscape of forests, fields and lakes to the mountains of Connemara, with the Maamturk range lurking in the background.

To gain access to the summit of Benlevy, which offers a wonderful panorama, take the right turn before the T-junction I mentioned and heading for a townland named Ballard on the OSI map. Look out for a ladder stile beside a gate on your right that provides access to the hillside. You can then head down to Lough Coolin on the northern side of the hill.

Cong to Cornamona

Map: Ordnance Survey. Discovery Series. Sheet 38

Start: Cong village, Co Mayo. From Galway take the N84 to Headford; turn left on to the R334 to Cross village. Then take the R346 to Cong.

Finish: Cornamona, Co Galway. If a linear walk is impractical, there are plenty of opportunities for looped walks around Cong Forest, Clonbur Wood and Benlevy/Lough Coolin.

Time: Two to three hours for each leg: Cong to Clonbur, Seanbóthar and Benlevy/Lough Coolin.

Distance: Cong to Clonbur: 8km, Seanbóthar (Clonbur to Cornamona): 10km. Plus a further 2.3km of trails at Ard na Gaoithe.

Suitability: Moderate. With its well-marked trails and low hills the area is suitable for everyone, but Benlevy requires care as the terrain is steep and wet in places – navigation skills and rain gear are vital in poor weather. You can make your route as easy or as strenuous as you like, but some of the forest trails can be churned up, so good boots are crucial.

Food and services: Cong, Clonbur, Cornamona. Tourist office in Cong.

Further information: See irishtrails.ieand coillteoutdoors.ie for maps, route information and looped walk options.

The very loneliest place

LENNY ANTONELLI takes a ten hour trek through the wilderness of north Mayo.

Irish Times, 18 February, 2012

photo; jack evans

FOR CENTURIES FARMERS used the Bangor Trail to take livestock through the Nephin Beg mountains and the vast Owenduff bog, now part of Mayo’s Ballycroy National Park.

Irish naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger described this landscape as “the very loneliest place in the country” in his 1937 book The Way That I Went.

“The hills themselves are encircled by this vast area of trackless bog,” he wrote. “I confess I find such a place not lonely or depressing but inspiring. You are thrown at the same time back upon yourself and forward against the mystery and majesty of nature.” We park beside the bothy – a stone shelter for hikers – at Letterkeen Wood, north of Newport. Many walkers begin in the town, but the trail from there is mostly on-road. From Letterkeen it’s 25km of wilderness before we’ll hit Tarmac again.

Local hiking guide Barry Murphy of Tourism Pure Walking joins us. After crossing the Altaconey River, the track skirts the edge of the huge conifer plantation. Something on the riverbank catches Murphy’s eye. “Otter droppings,” he says. “Smells like white wine.”

Many walkers loop back to Letterkeen at the end of the plantation but we carry on past Nephin Beg mountain, crossing nameless streams that feed the bog. Scots pine trees once covered this land, but about 4,000 years ago Ireland’s climate grew wetter. Heavy rainfall washed minerals down through the soil, waterlogging the land. Mosses took over, bog formed and the forest withered.

We take a detour for lunch to the Scardaun Loughs in the valley between Nephin Beg and Slieve Carr.

Heading back to the trail, we cross a ravine sheltering a lone oak tree. “The only tree on the Bangor Trail,” Murphy says. The trail skirts the edge of Slieve Carr, known by hikers as Ireland’s remotest mountain, and passes the stone ruins of old farmsteads. Ravens circle overhead.

“I’ve never seen the trail this dry,” Barry says. This provokes laughter, as we frequently plunge shin-deep into the bog. The trail is as wet as it is remote. Barry says the biggest mistake hikers could make is to try and save time by walking straight across the bog – those who built the trail kept it high enough to avoid deep bog but low enough to prevent needless climbing.

The terrain varies from rocky to extremely wet, and at points it’s hard to follow, making navigation skills vital. Timber and stone tracks are now being laid on parts. We emerge into the desolate Tarsaghaunmore valley, with the river meandering across the landscape. A small farmstead in the distance provides the first sign of modern civilisation we’ve seen for hours. Because of our late (9.30am) start, we’ll be hiking the last few miles in the dark. We put on headlamps to tackle the last low hills as the lights of Bangor Erris appear in the distance. Exhausted, we reach a road outside the village after 10 hours hiking. Tackling the Bangor Trail is a serious task, particularly in winter. It demands experience, willpower, and the right gear. But the effort expended will reward you with a breathtaking trek through one of Ireland’s last wildernesses.

Bangor Trail, Co Mayo

Map : Ordnance Survey. Discovery Series. Sheet 23

Start: Brogan Carroll bothy at Letterkeen Wood, 12km north of Newport, Co Mayo.

Leaving Newport take the N59 towards Achill and turn right after 1km at the sign for Bangor Trail/Letterkeen Loop.

Follow for 10km until Letterkeen forest, then continue to follow Bangor Trail/ Letterkeen Loop signs to the bothy.

Finish : Bangor Erris village. Leaving a second car here before the hike would be ideal, but we left bicycles in order to cycle back to Letterkeen the next day.

Route: This is not an official waymarked way, but there is some sparse marking on the trail. At grid reference F889131, make sure to turn left to follow the stream as directed by the marker, rather than following the track off to the right. Not all streams along the way have bridges, and some may be difficult to cross after heavy rainfall.

Time: 8-12 hours

Distance: 25km

Suitability: Strenuous. Physical fitness, good hiking boots and rain gear, warm clothing, plenty of food and water, hiking experience and navigation skills all essential.

Tapping in to high technology's heavyweight history

An exhibition in Galway pays homage to Ireland’s small role in the history of tech manufacturing, writes  Lenny Antonelli

Irish Times, 4 November, 2011

JUST A month after the death of Steve Jobs, it’s fitting that the first exhibit you see inside Galway’s new National Computer and Communications Museum showcases some of Apple’s most iconic computers, including the original 1984 Macintosh.

“It was the first popular computer to use a graphics interface – to use windows, to use icons and to use a mouse,” curator Brendan Smith says of the first Mac. “There was a little programme on it showing people how to use a mouse.”

Beside it sits an Apple II, one of the world’s first popular desktop computers. On its underside are words rarely seen on computers today: Made in Ireland. Apple opened a factory in Cork in 1981, its first outside the US.

The new museum pays homage to Ireland’s small role in the history of tech manufacturing – among its exhibits are a telephone exchange built in Galway by Nortel, floppy disks made in Limerick by Verbatim, and a 6ft “minicomputer” manufactured here in the 1970s by Digital.

But the museum’s centrepiece is a row of classic computers from the 1970s and 80s, including the famous BBC Micro. The broadcaster launched the machine in 1981 to accompany TV shows on computer education. More than a million were sold, mostly to schools. The machine was designed to link up easily with other devices, such as musical equipment. The bands A-Ha, Depeche Mode and Erasure all used it to compose songs.

Sitting next to the BBC Micro is a rarity: the Dragon, the only desktop computer ever designed and built in Wales. Launched in 1982, the machine flopped partly because its keyboard only had upper-case letters – its manufacturer failed to take heed of the growing demand for word processing.

The Apprentice’s Sir Alan Sugar didn’t make that mistake when he launched the Amstrad CPC, also on display. “He looked at offices full of people, full of secretaries, and what were they using? They were using an electronic typewriter,” Smith says. So in 1984 he launched his computer to the mass market. The range stayed in production for eight years, sold three million units, and sent Sugar on his way to vast wealth.

The museum also charts the history of the the laptop, boasting a 1983 Compaq Portable – a huge and heavy computer dubbed a “luggable” that was only deemed portable because it folded up and had a handle on top.

It also features one of Motorola’s classic 1980s “brick” mobile phones. Smith points out that watching Captain Kirk use a handheld “communicator” in Star Trek inspired Motorola’s Martin Cooper to develop the first mobile phone. Technologies such as the tablet computer and voice translation software were also inspired by the classic sci-fi show.

Space travel, real or fictional, had a heavy influence on early computer games such as Space Invaders and Asteroid. Both can be found in the museum’s retro-gaming area, home to iconic machines such as the Atari and the Sega Mega Drive. The museum runs retro-gaming nights each month and teaches computer programming to kids by showing them how to input and manipulate the code for classic games.

Smith is also expecting delivery of a full-size arcade machine soon. “We’re going to get a school to build up the electronics behind it. It’s not just a museum piece, it will be built by children,” he says. Plans are also afoot for classes for children on building mobile apps. Smith wants the museum to inspire children to become Ireland’s tech innovators of the future.

The museum also charts Ireland’s role in the development of modern communications, from the laying of the first underwater telegraph cable from Valentia Island to Newfoundland, to Guglielmo Marconi’s pioneering work in Ireland on long-distance radio communication. “Marconi’s mother grabbed him, brought him over [from Italy] to London and introduced him to the Anglo-Irish aristocracy that she was a part of, being from the Jameson whiskey family,” Smith says.

“He got his seed capital from people like them. She introduced him. Like any Irish mother, she was quite pushy.”

Marconi would go on to develop the first regular wireless telegraph across the Atlantic, between Clifden and Canada.

Radio technology spread rapidly after that, and one engaging display at the museum suggests the world’s first general radio broadcast might have been sent by Irish republicans in Dublin during the Rising on Easter Monday 1916. Before this, transmissions were directed to specific recipients. “They definitely did send out a broadcast, whether anybody picked it up or not, who knows,” Smith says. The group’s message read: “Irish Republic declared in Dublin today. Irish troops have captured city and are in full possession. Enemy cannot move in city. The whole country is rising.”

The era of mass broadcast arrived soon after – the museum features classic radios from the 1930s and 50s – and brought huge cultural and social change. Radio stations started catering to a new, youthful audience.

“For the first time you had young people that dressed differently, had different types of hairstyle, different types of social attitudes, and different types of music,” Smith says. “You had young people in Warsaw, in Dublin, in London, in Washington, listening to the same type of music.”

In the 1950s Sony popularised the pocket transistor radio, another of the museum’s artefacts. “The great thing for young people was that it had batteries, it meant that you got away from plugging it into the wall, from the house, from the parents.”

Smith says some of his older students are often intimated by MP3 players and smartphones. “They think it’s totally for young people and that it’s kind of scary.” Then he takes out his 1950s pocket radio. “I say to them that over 50 years ago, you scared the pants off your parents, you were the teenagers at the time listening to anything and everything. Nothing has really changed.”

The National Computer and Communications Museum is in NUI Galway’s Digital Enterprise Research Institute. 

Growing food on ghost estates

Urban agriculture is thriving in rundown Detroit as communities take over derelict sites to grow food. But with our thousands of ghost estates and other leftovers from the property boom, could Ireland plough a similar path? Lenny Antonelli reports.

Organic Matters magazine, December 2010

When Detroit native Mark Covington lost his job as an environmental engineer and moved back to his old neighbourhood, he decided to get to work improving the rundown area. He cleaned up an empty lot and planted fruit and vegetables, allowing locals to harvest the food for free.

Covington wanted to buy a nearby derelict building and turn it into a community centre too, but he couldn’t get a grant or loan. Then journalist Paul Harris profiled Covington’s project in the Guardian, and an anonymous donor appeared with the cash. Covington’s Georgia Street neighbourhood has been transformed: disadvantaged locals can now harvest free food, kids watch movies at an outdoor cinema and the community holds regular street parties.

Detroit’s decline is infamous. Once an industrial giant, in the 1960s the city was the fourth largest in the US and home to two million people. Its population is now just 900,000, and one third of the city — an area of land the size of San Francisco — is derelict.

But grassroots community projects are revitalising the city, and urban farming projects like Covington’s are thriving. Last year alone over 900 food plots were created, and plans are afoot to establish the world’s largest urban farm in the city.

Here in Ireland, the Department of Environment revealed last month that we have 2,800 ghost estates. Over 75,000 occupied homes now sit within unfinished estates, and a further 58,000 sites have planning permission for houses that remain unbuilt. Meanwhile, Nama (the National Asset Management Agency) is taking over property loans worth tens of billions of euro.

Nobody seems to have started growing food on ghost estates or Nama property yet. But plenty of groups have proposed it, including the South Dublin Allotments Association, which suggested the idea in a submission to Nama.

“We did a submission on the idea of using the land on an interim basis as allotments on smaller sites, and where there are larger sites we figured they could be used for… commercial growers, for people who are market gardeners,” says the SDAA’s Michael Fox.

The group submitted a comprehensive list of reasons why growing food on Nama property makes sense, from preventing dereliction to encouraging food independence, developing growing skills at a time of unemployment and creating small businesses that could sell produce at farmers’ markets. The idea makes sense for Fox — “all it takes is a little bit of collaboration and cohesive planning,” he says — but Nama didn’t bite.

But the SDAA aren’t the only ones pushing the idea.  An Taisce suggested it in their submission to Nama, while Dublin City Council’s latest draft development plan states that derelict sites in the city should be used for “community gardens, allotments, local markets and pocket parks.”

In 2005 Kaethe Burt-O’Dea set up a community garden on a derelict plot in Stoneybatter, in Dublin’s north city.  The garden has thrived, and so has the community around it — locals now hold street parties twice a year, and Burt-O’Dea is spearheading a campaign to turn a stretch of abandoned railway line nearby — long taken over by wildlife — into a public green space. Students from Dublin Institute of Technology have undertaken research for the rail line project as part of the Community Links programme at the college.

Burt-O’Dea and volunteers cleaned-up the line and surveyed its biodiversity earlier this year. She brims with enthusiasm about the possibilities for a space she calls a “secret garden” — not only its potential for growing food and sheltering wildlife, but also as a walking and cycling route that encourages healthy, green transport. “The way we build our environment has so much to do with the health of the population,” she says, adding:  “I really see it as an education space, in the same way that in a community garden you learn without being told.” The site is eventually earmarked for a Luas line, but Burt-O’Dea says her vision of a green urban corridor can co-exist with the tram.

She might not be growing food on ghost estates, but Burt-O’Dea is certainly breathing new life into derelict spaces.  Those thinking of making ghost estates productive might find another template in Dublin’s art scene. As the economy collapsed and businesses closed over the past three years, many buildings in Dublin became vacant — or just never found occupants in the first place— and rents dropped, allowing artists to start studios and galleries cheaply. Spaces that would otherwise be dormant became hubs for artists to work, exhibit and run events.

Now the current programme for government promises to provide free space for community groups and visual artists to display their work too, hinting that Nama properties could be used for this.  The Department of Education is examining whether some Nama sites are suitable for school building, and the HSE and other government departments are believed to be interested too.

Professor Rob Kitchin of the geography department at at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth has suggested some Nama properties could be used for schools, forestry or parks, while in September a letter in the Irish Times argued the state should hold on to Nama properties in the medium term and lease them out for socially useful activities. Others have floated the idea of using vacant housing in good condition for low cost rent-to-buy schemes, to provide shelter for the homeless, or even for squatting.

Ghost estates and Nama properties could be used for a raft of exciting ideas — growing food is just one of many. A Nama committee is examining what to do with the properties, and while bigger ideas like turning failed hotels into hospitals or prisons are unlikely to materialise, there are much simpler ways to use the property for public good.

Projects like Burt-O’Dea’s offer an inspiring example. She stresses that it’s often small grassroots projects like that really transform a town. “If you energise an area, then it becomes attractive,” she says. One small community garden can be a catalyst for dozens of other projects that revitalise derelict spaces — and now it’s surely only a matter of time before the idea spreads to land leftover from the property boom. “Getting people to think differently about a city gradually,” Burt-O’Dea says. “That’s how real change happens.”

The Christmas drink diaries

Note: this is my version. As you'll see the Irish Times's edit made me a sound a bit more repentant at the end than I actually was. 

Published in The Irish Times, January 2011

I spent the holidays at home in Galway as usual. My only drink on Christmas Eve was a glass of white wine, which I used to wash down some crabmeat, brown bread and chocolate cheesecake (though not in the same mouthful) at a friend's house. I planned to soberly spend Christmas Day geeking out over my new David Attenborough DVDs, but my mother had other ideas. "Why don't we watch The Notebook?" she insisted, with my 15 year old sister backing her up. I reckoned my naggin of whiskey and four small bottles of Grolsch would be enough to make the film tolerable. It wasn't nearly. I had pretty much the same St Stephen's Day experience I suspect most people do: pretend to have fun while spending most of the night queuing for the bar or fighting to hold on to an area of dancefloor the size of your foot. Total drinks consumed? Three small bottles of Grolsch and two big bottles of Erdinger before going out, and four pints of Galway Hooker pale ale in the pub.

I spent the evening of the 27th in a bar relaxing over two pints of Galway Hooker and a Hoegaarden while watching the love of my life, Arsenal Football Club, thump Chelsea 3-1. The following evening I stopped by a friend's house with a rucksack full of booze, but only drank one Erdinger and three Grolsch while failing miserably at Buzz Junior, a Playstation game designed for kids aged three and up.

I embraced sobriety on the 29th (or rather I couldn't find anyone willing to go to the pub with me) but made up for it the next night, which started with two pints of Galway Hooker and a pint of Pilsner Urquell at half five, followed by four whiskey and cokes with some friends in their hotel room. Then back to the pub for four pints of Galway Hooker, after which going to a friend's house at 3am for two gin and tonics seemed like a perfectly logical idea.

New year's eve started at a friend's house with three whiskey and cokes and a Grolsch. At 11pm I left for a party outside the city. Most people there seem convinced that getting into the sauna was the best way to start the new the new year — after my seventh whiskey and coke it seemed an absurd suggestion, but after my eighth it made perfect sense.

And that was that. Though my mother has just suggested I join her to watch Poseidon — the remake — tonight (I'm writing this on New Year's Day) so I might still need a last nightcap or two. I'm feeling fairly exhausted, and aware that I drank far too much over the holidays. But gross overconsumption at Christmas gives us the motivation to spend at least the first two weeks of the new year being healthy, before lazily and inevitably regressing into bad habits again. And that's better than not trying at all, right?

Teaching the teachers

The Department of Education has announced plans to revamp teacher training in line with some of the best education systems in the world. But will it make a difference? Lenny Antonelli reports

Village magazine, January 2011

Training for most secondary school teachers is inadequate, the Department of Education has admitted. This surprising statement is found in a new plan that proposes a major revamp of teacher training in Ireland. The Better Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People plan says that the typical nine-month graduate teaching course "cannot adequately prepare the great majority of post-primary teachers for developing the skills required to teach or progress their students' literacy and numeracy skills." "There's not enough time to do anything well in nine months," Dr Jim Gleeson of the Department of Education and Professional Studies at the University of Limerick told Village. "There's an increasing realisation that in a lot of European countries the teacher education experience is longer."

The plan proposes a shake-up of training for aspiring primary and secondary teachers. College courses for both will be extended by one year, and students will spend more time engaging in teaching practice in the classrooms of "high quality" teachers. Newly qualified teachers will get further support from mentors, while further training will be mandatory for teachers during their careers. More emphasis will be placed on literacy and numeracy in schools, and on standardised testing.

The document is only at draft stage, and the Teaching Council— which promotes and regulates teaching in Ireland — will soon make more thorough recommendations on teacher training. But the plan appears to be based on strong international evidence that great teaching is at the heart of the world's best education systems. Despite having a major impact on students teaching quality is rarely debated in Ireland.

In 2007, consultants McKinsey published How The World's Best-Performing School Systems Come Out On Top, a detailed look at what traits the world's best education systems — as judged by the OECD — have in common. The underlying factor? It’s largely down to selecting the best graduates to teach and giving them the best training possible.

In top performing countries such as Finland and South Korea entry to teacher training is highly selective, making the profession attractive to the best graduates. To be accepted students typically have to show excellent literacy and numeracy, strong communication skills, a willingness to learn and desire to teach.

Top education systems see improving teaching as the only way to boost student outcomes, according to McKinsey. Teachers are coached in the classroom and expected to learn from each other. Schools cultivate a culture of continuous improvement, and principals devote their time to supporting both teachers and pupils rather than administrating. Schools set high standards for every child, evaluate student performance and intervene when standards aren’t met.

The UK charity Teach First has been applying many of these lessons since 2002. The charity aims to fight educational disadvantage by recruiting top graduates, training them as teachers and placing them in some of the UK’s most challenging schools. Its teachers improve struggling departments according to UK inspectors Ofsted, and over 80% of Teach First teachers are rated either 'outstanding' or 'good'.

Victoria Richley is in the second year of the Teach First programme. She graduated from the University of Newcastle with a degree in English in 2007 and then went to Spain to study Spanish. "I had the intention when I was coming back to the UK that I was going to study law. However when I was away I started to realise I didn't want to work in the corporate world," she said.

Like all Teach First participants, she began with six weeks of intensive training before starting to teach. "Teaching is a profession that's based on reflection and learning from what you do in the classroom," she said. Teach First participants continue to attend seminars and workshops once in the classroom, and are offered extensive evaluation and coaching from tutors.

Competition for places on Teach First is intense, and the workload is huge. "When Teach First recruit people they're looking for things like humility, empathy, and motivation, as well as academic ability," she said. Students finish the first year of the programme with a graduate certificate in education and can then work towards a master's degree.

In Finland, most teachers spend at least five years training and possess a master's degree. Less than 10% of those who apply to be teachers are successful, and along with medicine teaching is the most sought-after profession. In Scotland every teacher is guaranteed a year’s work after graduating, with a lighter timetable to allow for induction and mentoring.

Back at home the Department of Education appears to be copying and pasting from the best international examples — its plan emphasises the importance of selecting the best graduates, providing them with extensive theoretical and practical training and then mentoring new teachers. It says initial training should produce “reflective” teachers, and that schools should cultivate a culture of constant improvement.

But major roadblocks lie ahead. Better teacher training will require more money, but the state's four-year austerity plan envisages a cut in teacher numbers, higher fees for third level students, a charge for PLC students, and cuts to programmes for travellers, adult literacy, community education and more.

"Given the paucity of resources at the moment it's remarkable that initial teacher education is now coming on to the agenda," Dr Jim Gleeson said. "For years and years when there were plenty of resources it was the forgotten part of the whole system a lot of the time."

He said that the proposed induction programme for teachers — which will see new teachers get a more experienced mentor — is still “skeletal”, and pointed to the danger that there will be little connection between initial teacher education and induction. “No matter how good any initial teacher education programme is, unless it’s built on and developed as the graduate goes through his or her professional career, it’s limited,” he said.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation welcomed the the one-year increase to the bachelor of education programme for primary teachers, but general secretary Sheila Nunan stressed that it's "impossible to implement the curriculum as planned in overcrowded, under-resourced classes in sub-standard schools." The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland said the plans will have little value to students struggling to keep up in big classes.

But evidence is mixed on how class size effects pupils. In 1998, Eric Hanushek of Stanford University examined 277 different studies on the effects of reducing class size, and found that in almost three quarters of cases it made no difference. A positive effect was found in just 15% of studies, and Hanushek concluded that teacher quality is far more important than class size.

But others say class size is crucial, claiming it leads to better relationships between teachers and students, less need for discipline, and that smaller classes prevent students from slipping through the cracks.

"If you're into more pupil centred teaching and learning, then large classes are a constraint," Gleeson said. "Whereas if you're going to teach in the traditional didactic way— the stand at the board and use the textbook way — I'm not sure class size is a major issue for many students, but for disadvantaged students it certainly is a huge problem."

Though most indicators were positive, the Department of Education's chief inspector reported last month that primary teachers were inadequately prepared for almost one quarter of maths and English lessons observed. Research last year showed that most second class pupils were taught by teachers who described themselves as “not very” or only “somewhat” confident teaching maths to weaker students. Meanwhile, the OECD was set to publish its latest research on the performance of 15 year olds in maths, science and literacy as Village went to print.

"Teacher training needs a shake up in this country, it needs a major overhaul,” recently qualified secondary school teacher Marie Lavin told Village.

Lavin reckons few of her fellow 2009 graduates from NUI Galway found teaching jobs in Ireland. "A lot went to England right after they graduated. Some stuck it out until after Christmas and then they went. I applied for umpteen jobs this summer. I didn't get a reply, never mind an interview."

Presuming the planned reforms go ahead, they will have little impact if few changes are made in existing classrooms and if new teachers are expertly trained but left unemployed.

A group chaired by the Department of Education’s general secretary is overseeing the implementation of its new literacy and numeracy plan. The department is currently accepting public submissions on the document.

Dr Jim Gleeson is a member of the Teaching Council but was speaking in a personal capacity

Being more civic

Giving young people a basic understanding of politics and democracy is surely as important as any other activity in school — but civic education has a tumultuous history in Ireland, and is rarely taken seriously. Lenny Antonelli reports

Village magazine, September 2010

(Note: this is my edit of the article, not Village's)

Young people in Ireland are more politically aware than those in at least 30 other countries, according to new international research. The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) surveyed 140,000 students across 38 countries, and found that more Irish students intend to vote in future than the international average too.

But its initial findings have been largely ignored. The OECD’s conclusion in January that the mediocre standard of maths and science among Irish pupils stunts our economy generated headlines, but there’s been little focus on how the quality of our civic education effects the nation’s political and social health.

The ICCS findings provide a cautious thumbs up, but we’re still far from boasting an education system that ensures every student is politically engaged. “It's encouraging but it shouldn't be a cause for any complacency,” says Gerry Jeffers of the education department at NUI Maynooth.

There may even be quite subtle reasons for Ireland’s high placing, such our good literacy rate or similarities between topics in the survey and the Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) curriculum, explains Jude Cosgrove of the Educational Research Centre (ERC), which ran the ICCS survey in Ireland. The full ICCS report will be released in late September, and in November the ERC will publish a detailed national report [Update: now released, see erc.ie].

Promoting “active participation” may be one of CSPE’s main goals, but the ICCS survey — given to 3,400 second year students in Ireland — found students here have fairly average levels of involvement in civic activities outside school.

Sixty per cent of CSPE’s marks go towards a student’s report on their action project — some activity that involves civic engagement — but ‘soft’ projects are common. Teacher and campaigner Mark Conroy says many teachers invite the same guest speaker in year after year to discuss an uncontroversial issue, with students only given menial tasks such as finding the speaker’s phone number or welcoming him to the school. “It's meaningless. The students are certainly no better off in terms of civic attitudes at the end of it. If they did a project that had a component of proper community action, they'd learn something.”

“Civic and political education is a very pedestrian affair in Irish education,” he says. “It, to all intents and purposes, is an information source, rather than a call to arms. It does not have as its purpose the function of creating genuinely politically-conscious individuals.” No qualification in politics or sociology is needed to teach CSPE, and Conroy believes this hinders the subject. “The first thing I think that is needed is teachers who are genuinely fired up by the issues that should be raised in a CSPE class. All too often it is seen as a subject that fills up the gaps in a teacher's timetable.”

But important progress has still been made. Ireland is one of just 19 countries in the ICCS study that has a dedicated civics subject, while Gerry Jeffers says the fact 60% of CSPE’s marks are awarded for civic action — no matter how modest —  is a big step forward. And while some schools let the subject rot, it thrives in others where principals and teachers take it seriously. But Jeffers says the subject needs more than 40 minutes a week to flourish.

One CSPE student I spoke — my 15 year old sister — said she has no absolutely no interest in politics, but that CSPE nonetheless taught her the basics about voting and government. But she also said the subject is considered easy, and that many of the exam questions just require common sense.

Internationally there’s strong evidence that good civic education leads to greater participation and political awareness, but the subject has a turbulent history in Ireland. The Church of Ireland sought its introduction at the birth of Irish state but the Catholic Church objected, fearing it would encroach on religious education. In 1967 civics was introduced as an unexamined subject. The syllabus focused on the “accumulation of facts about public organisations”, and the importance of patriotism, morality and obeying the law. Civics and religion were often taught as one subject.

By the early 1970s the subject was dying. The Curriculumand Examinations Board (CEB)developed a new social and political studies syllabus in the 1980s, but it faced opposition — during the 1987 election the group Family Solidarity claimed the CEB was subversive and anti-Catholic. Fine Gael lost the election and the subject lay dormant until education minister Mary O'Rourke introduced a CSPE pilot project in 1993. In 1997, it became a Junior Cert subject.

Six years later Garret Fitzgerald criticised the lack of political education at senior cycle, arguing that, “when students are reaching the stage at which they would begin to have questions to ask and would want to probe and challenge, their interest is damped down by removing them from contact with political, social and civic issues”. The government proposed the introduction of a senior cycle civics subject in 2006, and the NCCA published a draft syllabus last year.

It’s an impressive document, emphasising human rights and democratic learning. And students will take it seriously — it’s designed as a full-time subject and the draft syllabus is rich in political philosophy, referring to Marx and Locke, to Plato and Hobbes.

But it’s future is uncertain. In response to a query I submitted asking when the subject would be introduced, the Department of Education said that no date had been set, and that its introduction would “ be considered in the context of the overall priorities and resources available in the system” when the syllabus is finalised.

And what about primary schools? There, civics is principally taught through Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE), and primary school teacher and Labour Party councillor Dermot Looney says the political elements focus mainly on the roles of different government positions and institutions. But he says that "it's not so important to learn about institutions of democracy but about democracy itself.” SPHE is typically taught for just half an hour per week as a standalone subject, and Looney believes it should get more time — at the expense of religious education, he suggests, which is allotted two and a half hours weekly.

Civic education is about more than just teaching the subject though. It’s about the entire school — after all, how can students be expected to become active democrats if they’re taught under an authoritarian school system?

“There are some who are happy to have education run in an authoritarian way,” Michael D Higgins said in 1992. “Theirs is a most unusual view: to be content to have education function as an autocratic, undemocratic institutional structure within a formal democracy.”

The ICCS study is less kind to Ireland on this front —  just 38% of students say they have taken part in decision-making at school. Student councils are a lot more common than a decade ago, but NUIM’s Gerry Jeffers stresses they’re just one example of student participation. “Student councils can contribute a lot but they have to be supported by a whole lot of other things,” he says. “How the school is run, how the teachers relate to the students — how much students rights are genuinely respected is the big issue.”

He says transition year offers vital lessons for making schools more democratic — the more relaxed atmosphere and reduced exam pressure means teachers have more time to listen to students. “Classes become much more democratic, more participative,” he says.

Mark Conroy believes that for civic education to flourish we must look outside schools, to cultivating a wider culture of dissent in society. “Our state was founded because of dissent and genuine political engagement, but since then each government has been a very conservative one, and none have encouraged dissent and civic engagement, or at least not in any meaningful way,” he says.

He says the media has “major responsibilities” in fostering dissent. It’s two sides of the same coin:  while the media must help create such a culture, students also need a curriculum that teaches them how to critically analyse endless messages from the media, politicians and special interests.

They need a curriculum that gets them asking questions. “The whole notion of power isn’t on the curriculum,” Jude Cosgrove says of CSPE. “I’m thinking the concept would be — why do some people have more power than others? How is power mediated, how is it perpetuated? Are there any working examples of power struggles that have resulted in new power structures? If you look at the curriculum a lot of it is sort of fact-based, kids maybe aren't maybe being taught to question… Why are some people in society less well off than others? Is that just? How could that be improved?”