Latest news with #O'Herlihy
Irish Examiner
25-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Carrigaline have 'big belief' but must focus on first day out, insists Chris O'Herlihy
2023 saw the fall of Carrigaline from the top-table of Cork club football. 2024 would be the year of their climb. Their demotion to Senior A at the end of '23 came about after a replay loss to Mallow, but only a few months later, a Division 1 league crown was harvested by beating Nemo Rangers. From there, the desire to get back up playing Premier Senior at the first opportunity was evident. And on they marched. Their nail-biting dispatch of Kanturk on penalties in the semi-final gave them a shot at putting right what went wrong a year earlier, and they booked their immediate return to the top grade with a two-point win over Knocknagree in the decider. "It was a very special year," said Carrigaline's Chris O'Herlihy. "We had a very good league campaign which set us up nicely for the senior A championship. "It was a very tough competition as well, so we were just glad to get over the line there." While - on paper - the league didn't go according to plan for the Carrigdhoun outfit in 2025, O'Herlihy insists some factors played into that. The integration of youth has been a positive aspect of the campaign, too. Chris O'Herlihy, Carrigaline, at the McCarthy Insurance Group 2025 Cork Club Football Championship launch, at SuperValu Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Pic: Jim Coughlan. "It was a tough league. We were down and few players and we had a few injuries along the way, but we definitely took a few learnings, and a lot of young players came through. We're happy with where we're at now." O'Herlihy and his Michael Meaney-managed Carrigaline side won't have it easy on their mission to make an impression on their return to Premier Senior level. A group containing Carbery Rangers, Clonakilty and St Finbarr's awaits. "We're going to try and build on last year, we have a very good test this weekend against Carbery (Rangers)," said defender O'Herlihy. "We'll just focus on that, hopefully get a result and push on from there. "If you lose the first game, you're under serious pressure straight away. That's been our big focus really, the first game. All the team are very good, Carbery (Rangers) will be a very tough test." Eyes fixed on an extended run into the latter stages of the competition? O'Herlihy insists they can't afford to take their vision off the here and now. "We have big belief in ourselves, but we haven't been looking that far ahead. We're just focused on the group, focused on the first game. We'll move onto Clon from there." The 2024 league final win was significant for the club as a whole, but particularly for one debutant. Cork senior footballer Brian O'Driscoll - having transferred from West Cork outfit Tadgh MacCarthaigh - made his Carrigaline bow that day. The West Cork native has had a major impact on the camp. "He was huge for us last year, not just the way he was playing, but his professionalism and experience definitely added a lot to us. "It was a huge help to us last year, competing in Senior A and getting over the line in the end, so it's great to have him," O'Herlihy concluded.
Irish Examiner
14-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Can Cape Clear survive? West Cork island school enrols just four children
Cape clear is dying, person by person, year by year, slowly but very definitely, dying. So opens the late Bill O'Herlihy's particularly doom-laden episode of RTE's current affairs series 7 Days about the future of the West Cork island. At the time it was aired 55 years ago, there were 197 people living there. With a woman having died just a week before he and his crew arrived on the island, the community were described as 'battling for survival'. What was noted was the decline in the population, from more than 600 in 1900 to less than 200 when the documentary was made in 1970. 'There are those who claim it will die in their lifetime, that it will be uninhabited, like the Blasket [islands] in 20 years,' O'Herlihy reported. 'The national school emphasises the island's decline today." He pointed out the school had just 31 children enrolled, drastically down from 150 in the 1950s at separate schools for boys and girls. Fast forward to today, and while the island hasn't died and is not uninhabited, it is yet again at a crossroads. This is because the number of children enrolled in Scoil Náisiúnta Inis Chléire for the coming school year is just four. Added to that, it has a housing crisis — there aren't enough homes for people to rent or buy if they chose to live on the island. There is a genuine fear that if the school numbers fall even lower, it could undermine the viability of Ireland's southernmost Gaeltacht island primary school and raise serious questions about the future of the island itself. Indeed, a number of islanders bemoan the fact that it is a long time since they heard the joyous shrieks, shouts, and laughter of children echoing around the undulating hills and boreens that sprawl across the 4km-long Island. Cecilia Uí Dhrisceoil came to Cape Clear from Dublin to attend an Irish course on the island in the 1970s. She was a trainee teacher at the time. When she qualified, she returned to the island to teach. Asked what she thought of the 7 Days episode on Cape Clear on RTÉ, she was unimpressed. 'I was on the island around that time, and I remember that documentary,' Scoil Náisiúnta Inis Chléire's former principal said. It was very dark, very dismal, and very negative and I just said in my own head that 'I hope he is wrong because I'm here for the long haul'. 'He was wrong. Reports exaggerating the island's death are usually by people who are not particularly fond of the island and maybe have other interests outside.' On the situation with the school, she said: 'The school is going through a lean period but it also went through a lean period in my day. 'We managed to get a family from Liverpool who wanted to attend an Irish-speaking school for a year or two and to this day, they come here every Easter holiday." She referenced other families who have come and sent their children to Cape Clear's school, including a woman who worked as a nurse on the island and a family from Cavan, who came in the 1990s and still live there. Comharchumann Chléire Teoranta bainisteoir Kevin McCann, who runs the island's co-op, came with four children and the family now has eight children, and they ensured the survival of the school in their own day. Contradicting anybody who says the island is in a crisis because of the low numbers enrolled in the school, Cecilia adds with a confident nod: 'All you need is one family to change everything.' Currently, Karina Zimmerman's school-age children make up three of the four children enrolled to start in the next school year. Karina Zimmerman at the main office for last weekend's Lavender Festival on Cape Clear. Her three children are enrolled to attend the island's school in the next school year. Picture: Neil Michael The fourth is the four-year-old daughter of Cotter's Bar landlady, Róisín Ní Chonaill, but she is concerned at the "dynamic" of her daughter being in a school made up entirely of another family's children. Saorlaith-Ré has been enrolled to start in September, and it is understood that in another two or three years, her other daughter, Caoilfhionn, may also be schooled on the island. Karina, who is expecting another child, arrived on the island in October 2019. Originally from Germany, the self employed businesswoman and her husband Andreas, who is a chimney sweep and a handyman, 'just came to look' at what the island had to offer her family. As well as deciding to stay, they also changed their mind about home-schooling their children. An issue with the school, which she did not divulge, led to her taking her children out for a time but they are now back. If another issue arose in the coming school year, would she be tempted to do the same again and pull her children from the school? 'It would really depend on, like, if it's changeable or not. I mean, we always go in to talk first and we try to negotiate. 'But if there was something that we're really, really not at all happy with or the children, then I'm sorry, I take the kids out. '[They are] my highest priority. It's nice that it's going hand in hand at the moment, that the children can have that, and it helps the school. But if I have to decide between family and school, it will always be family.' Recalling the time she did take her children out of the school, she said: 'When this happened, people came to us, and then they [told us] 'now the school can get into trouble'. '[It was like] we let the school down but no, we [didn't] let the school down. It's just for me, my kids are more important than school. 'So as long as helping the school goes together with helping my own children, I'm fine." Róisín Ní Chonaill, who admits being fixated with living on an island from an early age, first started coming to Cape Clear about seven years ago. Cotters Bar landlady Róisín Ní Chonaill with her daughters, two-year-old Caoilfhionn and four-year-old Saorlaith-Ré. Picture: Neil Michael The 26-year-old worked in Seán Rua's Seafood Restaurant and An Siopa Beag, run by Neil O'Regan at the North Harbour, a short walk from where ferries dock. After a year at art college on the mainland, she returned to the island to live after she became pregnant with Saorlaith-Ré. She has lived on the island ever since. 'When I was about 17, I had put in my then year book — in answer to the question where would I be in five or six years — that I would be living on an island,' she said. 'It's something I have always wanted to do. When I got here, there was, like, some sort of ancestral thing in me, something to do with the land and the sea and the history of it, the heritage and the Irish. "I'd be quite good at Irish. I loved Irish in school." She is a little torn about Saorlaith-Ré going to the school in September as the numbers are so small. 'What's best for her?' she asks aloud. 'She's very social. She has the social aspect from being in the pub. She's self confident. Even if there was one more family, I'd be happy. That's because of the numbers and a different dynamic. As far as life on the island is concerned, she says it is not as like any other part of rural Ireland as some might think. 'It's actually less like rural Ireland, I would say,' she said. 'You could be a lot more isolated in the back arse of Mayo where there's no houses for miles and miles. 'Here, you've got somebody at every kind of corner or you see the same people every day.' She said that when she returned to the island with Saorlaith-Ré when she was three months old, she felt 'held' by the rest of the community, who gathered around and were keen to help her if she ever needed help. 'I was a young new mom moving out here completely in the middle of winter but I felt really kind of like, I suppose, held by the community. People were making sure I was getting the shopping and all that kind of stuff. 'From a community point of view, there's a definite kind of holding, which is something that's quite rare within the kind of pace of life that we're living in. 'I think it's really special to just find somewhere that is very authentic, like the reality of having to get over things when they happen, and get on with things. 'I think there's a real kind of rawness to that you don't find in modern life as much.' While Mr McCann's role is to help steer through what he describes as a "collaborative process' to find at least one house in the community for a teacher, it is a 'dry run' for a bigger objective. He is one of the many on the island who believe one of the main things at the core of the island's woes is the lack of affordable housing to either buy or rent. The father-of-eight routinely plays in seisiúin in the island's North Harbour club with Cape Clear Island Distillery founder and manager Seamus Ó Drisceoil. Comharchumann Chléire Teoranta bainisteoir Kevin McCann, who runs the island's co-op, at his offices at Cape Clear's North Harbour. Picture: Neil Michael The two men are among a number of islanders behind a variety of initiatives and businesses. What the island wants to do is build houses that the co-op would retain ownership of, and rent out for essential workers or young families. The dilemma for the island is around building and selling affordable housing for people to attract them to the island but who might just buy it and then move away but rent it out as a holiday-let. 'There's a risk that people will come and we'd just be repeating the same mistakes,' he said. 'The house could just end up becoming a holiday home and people would move away, and we'd be back to square one. 'We're talking about a retained ownership housing scheme to help people pay affordable rent in a bid to encourage them to come here and live.' Brennus Voarino, who arrived on the island with his parents from his native France as a teenager in 2010, farms a herd of distinctive belted galloway cattle on the Fastnet Farm he owns and runs with partner Samantha Parsons. A member of the school committee, he is not unduly alarmed about the low school numbers. 'I feel quite positive about the school, ' he said. I think we're in a good position. It could be better but we've gone through more difficult times and we've always pulled through. 'So I think we will pull through again.' However, he feels that a more 'urgent' need is to attract younger families to 'keep the young population going'. He believes in a system of so-called gateway housing, whereby a family can be encouraged to come and live on the island in a low rental property for a set number of years as they save to buy land and build their own home on the island. After a set period of time, they would be expected to leave the gateway housing accommodation to make way for another young family. 'It can be a regular house but you choose who comes in,' he said, suggesting that families with school-age children could be more of a priority than others. 'Maybe families that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford buying a house on the island,' he said. 'They could come in and maybe live here while their kids are in school and maybe then, over that time, they find a piece of land they can buy.' While there is a shortage of available housing, there is no shortage of funds available for the island. More than €240,000 is, for example, to be spent on a new playground at the North Harbour. The tender for the project, which is almost entirely funded by the department of social protection, closed earlier this year. There is also a €35,000-a-year tourist manager job up for grabs to manage the Cape Clear Fastnet Experience and Heritage Centre. Built to replace an existing heritage centre on the island, it received €1m from Fáilte Ireland and Údarás na Gaeltachta last year. This will, when it opens, help the island operate as a 'last stop' gateway destination for tourists keen to visit the Fastnet lighthouse 6.5km southwest of Cape Clear. Farmer Brennus Voarino with some of his pedigree herd of Belted Galloway cattle. He is eager to see more young families on the island. Picture: Neil Michael. While the co-op does appear to be behind most things on the island, it is not the only entity operating for those living there. Local businesswoman Mary O'Driscoll, who runs a holiday cottage business and two of the island's three pubs with husband Ciarán, was recently involved in bringing a mini methane gas plant to the island. She helps run the voluntary group and charity, Tograí Chléire, which secured grant funding to bring onto the island the west Cork-made MyGug anaerobic digester system that — in effect — turns food waste into methane. Although only a pilot project at the moment which sees the gas being used for cooking in a small number of homes on Cape Clear, the plan is to extend it throughout the island. Tograí Chléire is also behind plans to revive what is known as the Cape Clear Gansey, or Geansaí Chléire, which was specially knit more than a century ago over a period of months from a highly detailed, dense, and durable yarn for fishermen. While the history of the jumper is currently being researched, the island could one day be a base for them to be produced. However, in the meantime, Údarás — which sources millions in taxpayers' money for projects on the island — is not without its critics. Those critics question the use of so much money to fund businesses and related opportunities on an island struggling to provide housing for people who want to work there. A spokesperson said in response: Investment has been strategically focused on developing sustainable economic opportunities that align with our mandate to promote economic development in Gaeltacht areas. Housing provision is the responsibility of local authorities and the department of housing, local government and heritage. But they said the Board of Údarás na Gaeltachta is doing what it can to help 'facilitate' housing. These include a comprehensive property review of Údarás na Gaeltachta's approximate 1,000-hectares estate to 'identify suitable sites to make available for housing for Irish speakers under existing Government schemes'. In addition, a committee of local authorities with Gaeltacht areas is identifying collaborative approaches to housing provision in Gaeltacht areas. The body is also funding a three-year position at Mayo County Council to coordinate the Vacant Property Scheme on behalf of Gaeltacht areas across all counties. One islander has other issues, not least having his own death exaggerated. Retired blind goat herder, Ed Harper, now 76, first came to the island from England in 1973 and has been farming goats on the island since 1979. Now largely house-bound, he was rumoured to have died earlier this year. 'I heard this rumour too,' he says. 'I can't remember where I heard it from, but it was very recent. 'I've got old, my balance has got bad and every bit that can ache does ache from time to time. 'Essentially, I've farmed for 45 years. Now I do bits and pieces, but very little or very seldom. 'That's where the rumour came from, and people hadn't seen me for a while.' Retired goat herder Ed Harper at his home on Caper Clear, from where he is happy to say that reports of his death have been 'greatly exagerated.' Picture: Neil Michael As far as the island dying, he is about as sanguine about that particular rumour as he is about reports of his own demise. 'It probably is dying but the fact of the matter is, Cape Clear has been dying since I first came here in 1973,' he said. 'It is taking a very long time to do it and it probably still will take quite a long time to do it. 'There's less farms than there used to be, and there are a lot less people, and a lot less working people.' As far as the school situation is concerned, he says that in recent years the numbers of children enrolled in it have been 'scraping along the bottom'. 'Four kids is relatively healthy, right, in terms of what has been,' he said. 'But does that mean the island is dying? I think it all depends on what people mean by Cape Clear 'dying'. 'I don't think that it will ever be a classic empty island with, you know, people just coming over on their own boats to admire the ruined houses. It might become an island of basically retired and hobby people from elsewhere, or it might become a place alongside maybe three, four or five large farms. He dismisses the lack of lots of children running and jumping around the school yard to shrieks of laughter echoing around the island as a 'romantic notion'. Ed says he hasn't heard that sound since his own eldest son — now in his 40s — was schooled on the island at a time when there were around 20 children in the school. He also dismisses as 'another myth' the idea that without lots of children in the school, the island's viability is threatened. 'Almost certainly the majority of our children, like the majority of all children born on the island, will not stay here,' he said. 'I mean, if you were to go to Baltimore and ask, how many of the children of Baltimore are still living in Baltimore, it wouldn't be many. 'People however, draw this distinction with Cape Clear because there's a ferry and there is the sea. 'You don't need to keep children. What you need to do is attract somebody else's children. You need to keep attracting lots of people in. 'As far as I'm concerned, reports of my own demise — and the island — have also been exaggerated." Read More West Cork island seeks new head teacher — and more children to help keep its school open
Irish Examiner
14-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
‘Cape Clear has been dying since I came here in 1973': What does the future hold for West Cork Gaeltacht island?
Cape clear is dying, person by person, year by year, slowly but very definitely, dying. So opens the late Bill O'Herlihy's particularly doom-laden episode of RTE's current affairs series 7 Days about the future of the West Cork island. At the time it was aired 55 years ago, there were 197 people living there. With a woman having died just a week before he and his crew arrived on the island, the community were described as 'battling for survival'. What was noted was the decline in the population, from more than 600 in 1900 to less than 200 when the documentary was made in 1970. 'There are those who claim it will die in their lifetime, that it will be uninhabited, like the Blasket [islands] in 20 years,' O'Herlihy reported. 'The national school emphasises the island's decline today." He pointed out the school had just 31 children enrolled, drastically down from 150 in the 1950s at separate schools for boys and girls. Fast forward to today, and while the island hasn't died and is not uninhabited, it is yet again at a crossroads. This is because the number of children enrolled in Scoil Náisiúnta Inis Chléire for the coming school year is just four. Added to that, it has a housing crisis — there aren't enough homes for people to rent or buy if they chose to live on the island. There is a genuine fear that if the school numbers fall even lower, it could undermine the viability of Ireland's southernmost Gaeltacht island primary school and raise serious questions about the future of the island itself. Indeed, a number of islanders bemoan the fact that it is a long time since they heard the joyous shrieks, shouts, and laughter of children echoing around the undulating hills and boreens that sprawl across the 4km-long Island. Cecilia Uí Dhrisceoil came to Cape Clear from Dublin to attend an Irish course on the island in the 1970s. She was a trainee teacher at the time. When she qualified, she returned to the island to teach. Asked what she thought of the 7 Days episode on Cape Clear on RTÉ, she was unimpressed. 'I was on the island around that time, and I remember that documentary,' Scoil Náisiúnta Inis Chléire's former principal said. It was very dark, very dismal, and very negative and I just said in my own head that 'I hope he is wrong because I'm here for the long haul'. 'He was wrong. Reports exaggerating the island's death are usually by people who are not particularly fond of the island and maybe have other interests outside.' On the situation with the school, she said: 'The school is going through a lean period but it also went through a lean period in my day. 'We managed to get a family from Liverpool who wanted to attend an Irish-speaking school for a year or two and to this day, they come here every Easter holiday." She referenced other families who have come and sent their children to Cape Clear's school, including a woman who worked as a nurse on the island and a family from Cavan, who came in the 1990s and still live there. Comharchumann Chléire Teoranta bainisteoir Kevin McCann, who runs the island's co-op, came with four children and the family now has eight children, and they ensured the survival of the school in their own day. Contradicting anybody who says the island is in a crisis because of the low numbers enrolled in the school, Cecilia adds with a confident nod: 'All you need is one family to change everything.' Currently, Karina Zimmerman's school-age children make up three of the four children enrolled to start in the next school year. Karina Zimmerman at the main office for last weekend's Lavender Festival on Cape Clear. Her three children are enrolled to attend the island's school in the next school year. Picture: Neil Michael The fourth is the four-year-old daughter of Cotter's Bar landlady, Róisín Ní Chonaill, but she is concerned at the "dynamic" of her daughter being in a school made up entirely of another family's children. Saorlaith-Ré has been enrolled to start in September, and it is understood that in another two or three years, her other daughter, Caoilfhionn, may also be schooled on the island. Karina, who is expecting another child, arrived on the island in October 2019. Originally from Germany, the self employed businesswoman and her husband Andreas, who is a chimney sweep and a handyman, 'just came to look' at what the island had to offer her family. As well as deciding to stay, they also changed their mind about home-schooling their children. An issue with the school, which she did not divulge, led to her taking her children out for a time but they are now back. If another issue arose in the coming school year, would she be tempted to do the same again and pull her children from the school? 'It would really depend on, like, if it's changeable or not. I mean, we always go in to talk first and we try to negotiate. 'But if there was something that we're really, really not at all happy with or the children, then I'm sorry, I take the kids out. '[They are] my highest priority. It's nice that it's going hand in hand at the moment, that the children can have that, and it helps the school. But if I have to decide between family and school, it will always be family.' Recalling the time she did take her children out of the school, she said: 'When this happened, people came to us, and then they [told us] 'now the school can get into trouble'. '[It was like] we let the school down but no, we [didn't] let the school down. It's just for me, my kids are more important than school. 'So as long as helping the school goes together with helping my own children, I'm fine." Róisín Ní Chonaill, who admits being fixated with living on an island from an early age, first started coming to Cape Clear about seven years ago. Cotters Bar landlady Róisín Ní Chonaill with her daughters, two-year-old Caoilfhionn and four-year-old Saorlaith-Ré. Picture: Neil Michael The 26-year-old worked in Seán Rua's Seafood Restaurant and An Siopa Beag, run by Neil O'Regan at the North Harbour, a short walk from where ferries dock. After a year at art college on the mainland, she returned to the island to live after she became pregnant with Saorlaith-Ré. She has lived on the island ever since. 'When I was about 17, I had put in my then year book — in answer to the question where would I be in five or six years — that I would be living on an island,' she said. 'It's something I have always wanted to do. When I got here, there was, like, some sort of ancestral thing in me, something to do with the land and the sea and the history of it, the heritage and the Irish. "I'd be quite good at Irish. I loved Irish in school." She is a little torn about Saorlaith-Ré going to the school in September as the numbers are so small. 'What's best for her?' she asks aloud. 'She's very social. She has the social aspect from being in the pub. She's self confident. Even if there was one more family, I'd be happy. That's because of the numbers and a different dynamic. As far as life on the island is concerned, she says it is not as like any other part of rural Ireland as some might think. 'It's actually less like rural Ireland, I would say,' she said. 'You could be a lot more isolated in the back arse of Mayo where there's no houses for miles and miles. 'Here, you've got somebody at every kind of corner or you see the same people every day.' She said that when she returned to the island with Saorlaith-Ré when she was three months old, she felt 'held' by the rest of the community, who gathered around and were keen to help her if she ever needed help. 'I was a young new mom moving out here completely in the middle of winter but I felt really kind of like, I suppose, held by the community. People were making sure I was getting the shopping and all that kind of stuff. 'From a community point of view, there's a definite kind of holding, which is something that's quite rare within the kind of pace of life that we're living in. 'I think it's really special to just find somewhere that is very authentic, like the reality of having to get over things when they happen, and get on with things. 'I think there's a real kind of rawness to that you don't find in modern life as much.' While Mr McCann's role is to help steer through what he describes as a "collaborative process' to find at least one house in the community for a teacher, it is a 'dry run' for a bigger objective. He is one of the many on the island who believe one of the main things at the core of the island's woes is the lack of affordable housing to either buy or rent. The father-of-eight routinely plays in seisiúin in the island's North Harbour club with Cape Clear Island Distillery founder and manager Seamus Ó Drisceoil. Comharchumann Chléire Teoranta bainisteoir Kevin McCann, who runs the island's co-op, at his offices at Cape Clear's North Harbour. Picture: Neil Michael The two men are among a number of islanders behind a variety of initiatives and businesses. What the island wants to do is build houses that the co-op would retain ownership of, and rent out for essential workers or young families. The dilemma for the island is around building and selling affordable housing for people to attract them to the island but who might just buy it and then move away but rent it out as a holiday-let. 'There's a risk that people will come and we'd just be repeating the same mistakes,' he said. 'The house could just end up becoming a holiday home and people would move away, and we'd be back to square one. 'We're talking about a retained ownership housing scheme to help people pay affordable rent in a bid to encourage them to come here and live.' Brennus Voarino, who arrived on the island with his parents from his native France as a teenager in 2010, farms a herd of distinctive belted galloway cattle on the Fastnet Farm he owns and runs with partner Samantha Parsons. A member of the school committee, he is not unduly alarmed about the low school numbers. 'I feel quite positive about the school, ' he said. I think we're in a good position. It could be better but we've gone through more difficult times and we've always pulled through. 'So I think we will pull through again.' However, he feels that a more 'urgent' need is to attract younger families to 'keep the young population going'. He believes in a system of so-called gateway housing, whereby a family can be encouraged to come and live on the island in a low rental property for a set number of years as they save to buy land and build their own home on the island. After a set period of time, they would be expected to leave the gateway housing accommodation to make way for another young family. 'It can be a regular house but you choose who comes in,' he said, suggesting that families with school-age children could be more of a priority than others. 'Maybe families that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford buying a house on the island,' he said. 'They could come in and maybe live here while their kids are in school and maybe then, over that time, they find a piece of land they can buy.' While there is a shortage of available housing, there is no shortage of funds available for the island. More than €240,000 is, for example, to be spent on a new playground at the North Harbour. The tender for the project, which is almost entirely funded by the department of social protection, closed earlier this year. There is also a €35,000-a-year tourist manager job up for grabs to manage the Cape Clear Fastnet Experience and Heritage Centre. Built to replace an existing heritage centre on the island, it received €1m from Fáilte Ireland and Údarás na Gaeltachta last year. This will, when it opens, help the island operate as a 'last stop' gateway destination for tourists keen to visit the Fastnet lighthouse 6.5km southwest of Cape Clear. Farmer Brennus Voarino with some of his pedigree herd of Belted Galloway cattle. He is eager to see more young families on the island. Picture: Neil Michael. While the co-op does appear to be behind most things on the island, it is not the only entity operating for those living there. Local businesswoman Mary O'Driscoll, who runs a holiday cottage business and two of the island's three pubs with husband Ciarán, was recently involved in bringing a mini methane gas plant to the island. She helps run the voluntary group and charity, Tograí Chléire, which secured grant funding to bring onto the island the west Cork-made MyGug anaerobic digester system that — in effect — turns food waste into methane. Although only a pilot project at the moment which sees the gas being used for cooking in a small number of homes on Cape Clear, the plan is to extend it throughout the island. Tograí Chléire is also behind plans to revive what is known as the Cape Clear Gansey, or Geansaí Chléire, which was specially knit more than a century ago over a period of months from a highly detailed, dense, and durable yarn for fishermen. While the history of the jumper is currently being researched, the island could one day be a base for them to be produced. However, in the meantime, Údarás — which sources millions in taxpayers' money for projects on the island — is not without its critics. Those critics question the use of so much money to fund businesses and related opportunities on an island struggling to provide housing for people who want to work there. A spokesperson said in response: Investment has been strategically focused on developing sustainable economic opportunities that align with our mandate to promote economic development in Gaeltacht areas. Housing provision is the responsibility of local authorities and the department of housing, local government and heritage. But they said the Board of Údarás na Gaeltachta is doing what it can to help 'facilitate' housing. These include a comprehensive property review of Údarás na Gaeltachta's approximate 1,000-hectares estate to 'identify suitable sites to make available for housing for Irish speakers under existing Government schemes'. In addition, a committee of local authorities with Gaeltacht areas is identifying collaborative approaches to housing provision in Gaeltacht areas. The body is also funding a three-year position at Mayo County Council to coordinate the Vacant Property Scheme on behalf of Gaeltacht areas across all counties. One islander has other issues, not least having his own death exaggerated. Retired blind goat herder, Ed Harper, now 76, first came to the island from England in 1973 and has been farming goats on the island since 1979. Now largely house-bound, he was rumoured to have died earlier this year. 'I heard this rumour too,' he says. 'I can't remember where I heard it from, but it was very recent. 'I've got old, my balance has got bad and every bit that can ache does ache from time to time. 'Essentially, I've farmed for 45 years. Now I do bits and pieces, but very little or very seldom. 'That's where the rumour came from, and people hadn't seen me for a while.' Retired goat herder Ed Harper at his home on Caper Clear, from where he is happy to say that reports of his death have been 'greatly exagerated.' Picture: Neil Michael As far as the island dying, he is about as sanguine about that particular rumour as he is about reports of his own demise. 'It probably is dying but the fact of the matter is, Cape Clear has been dying since I first came here in 1973,' he said. 'It is taking a very long time to do it and it probably still will take quite a long time to do it. 'There's less farms than there used to be, and there are a lot less people, and a lot less working people.' As far as the school situation is concerned, he says that in recent years the numbers of children enrolled in it have been 'scraping along the bottom'. 'Four kids is relatively healthy, right, in terms of what has been,' he said. 'But does that mean the island is dying? I think it all depends on what people mean by Cape Clear 'dying'. 'I don't think that it will ever be a classic empty island with, you know, people just coming over on their own boats to admire the ruined houses. It might become an island of basically retired and hobby people from elsewhere, or it might become a place alongside maybe three, four or five large farms. He dismisses the lack of lots of children running and jumping around the school yard to shrieks of laughter echoing around the island as a 'romantic notion'. Ed says he hasn't heard that sound since his own eldest son — now in his 40s — was schooled on the island at a time when there were around 20 children in the school. He also dismisses as 'another myth' the idea that without lots of children in the school, the island's viability is threatened. 'Almost certainly the majority of our children, like the majority of all children born on the island, will not stay here,' he said. 'I mean, if you were to go to Baltimore and ask, how many of the children of Baltimore are still living in Baltimore, it wouldn't be many. 'People however, draw this distinction with Cape Clear because there's a ferry and there is the sea. 'You don't need to keep children. What you need to do is attract somebody else's children. You need to keep attracting lots of people in. 'As far as I'm concerned, reports of my own demise — and the island — have also been exaggerated." Read More West Cork island seeks new head teacher — and more children to help keep its school open
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Illinois Tool Works's (NYSE:ITW) Q1 Earnings Results: Revenue In Line With Expectations
Manufacturing company Illinois Tool Works (NYSE:ITW) met Wall Street's revenue expectations in Q1 CY2025, but sales fell by 3.4% year on year to $3.84 billion. Its GAAP profit of $2.38 per share was 1.1% above analysts' consensus estimates. Is now the time to buy Illinois Tool Works? Find out in our full research report. Revenue: $3.84 billion vs analyst estimates of $3.84 billion (3.4% year-on-year decline, in line) EPS (GAAP): $2.38 vs analyst estimates of $2.35 (1.1% beat) EPS (GAAP) guidance for the full year is $10.35 at the midpoint, roughly in line with what analysts were expecting Operating Margin: 24.8%, down from 28.4% in the same quarter last year Free Cash Flow Margin: 12.9%, similar to the same quarter last year Organic Revenue fell 1.6% year on year, in line with the same quarter last year Market Capitalization: $70.92 billion 'ITW commenced 2025 with solid execution, achieving financial results ahead of plan expectations as we continued to outperform underlying end markets,' said Christopher A. O'Herlihy, President and Chief Executive Officer. Founded by Byron Smith, an investor who held over 100 patents, Illinois Tool Works (NYSE:ITW) manufactures engineered components and specialized equipment for numerous industries. Examining a company's long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Any business can have short-term success, but a top-tier one grows for years. Regrettably, Illinois Tool Works's sales grew at a sluggish 2.7% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This fell short of our benchmarks and is a poor baseline for our analysis. We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within industrials, a half-decade historical view may miss cycles, industry trends, or a company capitalizing on catalysts such as a new contract win or a successful product line. Illinois Tool Works's recent performance shows its demand has slowed as its revenue was flat over the last two years. Illinois Tool Works also reports organic revenue, which strips out one-time events like acquisitions and currency fluctuations that don't accurately reflect its fundamentals. Over the last two years, Illinois Tool Works's organic revenue was flat. Because this number aligns with its normal revenue growth, we can see the company's core operations (not acquisitions and divestitures) drove most of its results. This quarter, Illinois Tool Works reported a rather uninspiring 3.4% year-on-year revenue decline to $3.84 billion of revenue, in line with Wall Street's estimates. Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to remain flat over the next 12 months. This projection is underwhelming and suggests its newer products and services will not accelerate its top-line performance yet. Software is eating the world and there is virtually no industry left that has been untouched by it. That drives increasing demand for tools helping software developers do their jobs, whether it be monitoring critical cloud infrastructure, integrating audio and video functionality, or ensuring smooth content streaming. Click here to access a free report on our 3 favorite stocks to play this generational megatrend. Illinois Tool Works has been a well-oiled machine over the last five years. It demonstrated elite profitability for an industrials business, boasting an average operating margin of 24.7%. This result isn't surprising as its high gross margin gives it a favorable starting point. Analyzing the trend in its profitability, Illinois Tool Works's operating margin rose by 2.5 percentage points over the last five years, as its sales growth gave it operating leverage. In Q1, Illinois Tool Works generated an operating profit margin of 24.8%, down 3.6 percentage points year on year. Since Illinois Tool Works's operating margin decreased more than its gross margin, we can assume it was less efficient because expenses such as marketing, R&D, and administrative overhead increased. We track the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) for the same reason as long-term revenue growth. Compared to revenue, however, EPS highlights whether a company's growth is profitable. Illinois Tool Works's EPS grew at a decent 8.1% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years, higher than its 2.7% annualized revenue growth. This tells us the company became more profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded. We can take a deeper look into Illinois Tool Works's earnings to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Illinois Tool Works's operating margin declined this quarter but expanded by 2.5 percentage points over the last five years. Its share count also shrank by 7.9%, and these factors together are positive signs for shareholders because improving profitability and share buybacks turbocharge EPS growth relative to revenue growth. Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a more recent period because it can provide insight into an emerging theme or development for the business. For Illinois Tool Works, its two-year annual EPS growth of 6.6% was lower than its five-year trend. We hope its growth can accelerate in the future. In Q1, Illinois Tool Works reported EPS at $2.38, down from $2.73 in the same quarter last year. Despite falling year on year, this print beat analysts' estimates by 1.1%. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Illinois Tool Works's full-year EPS of $11.36 to shrink by 8.1%. It was good to see Illinois Tool Works slightly beat analysts' EPS expectations. On the other hand, its organic revenue slightly missed. Overall, this was a weaker quarter. The stock traded down 1.6% to $238 immediately after reporting. Is Illinois Tool Works an attractive investment opportunity right now? When making that decision, it's important to consider its valuation, business qualities, as well as what has happened in the latest quarter. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here, it's free. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Illinois Tool Works Stock Is Under Pressure Today
Illinois Tool Works topped earnings expectations, but revenue was down year over year. The company has a plan to offset the impact of tariffs. This looks like a difficult period for ITW, but the long-term outlook is strong. Illinois Tool Works (NYSE: ITW) managed to top expectations for the quarter, but tariffs and macroeconomic concerns are weighing on the company. Investors are taking a glass-half-empty approach, sending shares of the diversified manufacturer down 4% as of 10:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » Illinois Tool Works (ITW) earned $2.44 per share in the quarter on $3.8 billion in sales, topping the $2.35 per share consensus Wall Street estimate but falling about $40 million short on revenue. Sales were down 3.4% year over year, due to a combination of foreign currency fluctuations and tepid demand in some end markets. The company, which manufacturers components and tools for a wide range of industries including automaking, construction, and welding, reported an operating margin of 24.8% in the quarter, compared to 26.8% for full-year 2024. CEO Christopher A. O'Herlihy referred to the "uncertain external environment" ITW is navigating, but said the company is maintaining its full-year guidance. It expects a combination of price increases and other actions will be able to offset any tariff cost impacts. There's no way to avoid a tariff hit, but companies like ITW that have products that are essential to their customers at least have the ability to pass on some of their added costs to end users. The company does a lot of its manufacturing in the markets where it sells, helping to partly insulate it from tariffs, but still relies on imports for raw materials and other components. This is a strong company caught in a tough environment. With the stock only down 7% year to date, investors need to understand that there could be more downside from here. But for patient long-term investors, especially those who would appreciate a nearly 3% dividend yield while they wait, Illinois Tool Works deserves a place on a watch list. Before you buy stock in Illinois Tool Works, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Illinois Tool Works wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $607,048!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $668,193!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 880% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 161% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of April 28, 2025 Lou Whiteman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Illinois Tool Works. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Illinois Tool Works Stock Is Under Pressure Today was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
