OCEAN & ENVIRONMENT
Creative Places West Cork Islands
DISPATCH #3:
Oileán na Trialach / Trial Island
Oileán na Trialach / Trial Island
27 August 2026
It’s blackberry season, and the lanes are lined with a glut of fruit. But after weeks of drought, two days of sudden rain have furred the glossy black globes with grey rot. I go out to pick and most of the harvest has turned. How quickly those stores of energy can sour, weeks of sunlight captured and held as sugar and vitamin C, now collapsing. Energy gathered up, energy spilled over.
I’m thinking of energy and local energy circulation on a sunny day in July as we take the ferry out to Oilean Chléire (Cape Clear), the southernmost inhabited point of Ireland. It’s also the furthest out to sea of all the West Cork islands, lying 40 minutes by ferry off the coast from Baltimore. Unlike Sherkin, its near neighbour, Chléire’s terrain is rugged, marked by craggy cliffs and infamous hills. The island is also a Gaeltacht region, with Irish being the main language spoken.
Oilean Chléire is one of the few (if perhaps not the only) West Cork islands that has a community garden (Gairdín Pobail), and it’s this we’ve come to visit. On a blue wooden pallet at its entrance are rows of two- and one-litre plastic milk containers. They sit sweltering in the sun, but the liquid inside is not white and milky. It’s a light green, resembling pond or bog water. The containers are waiting to be collected by members of the island community. In taking back one of the recycled plastic cartons, islanders will be recovering energy that they themselves have generated; energy spilled over, gathered back in.
It’s blackberry season, and the lanes are lined with a glut of fruit. But after weeks of drought, two days of sudden rain have furred the glossy black globes with grey rot. I go out to pick and most of the harvest has turned. How quickly those stores of energy can sour, weeks of sunlight captured and held as sugar and vitamin C, now collapsing. Energy gathered up, energy spilled over.
I’m thinking of energy and local energy circulation on a sunny day in July as we take the ferry out to Oilean Chléire (Cape Clear), the southernmost inhabited point of Ireland. It’s also the furthest out to sea of all the West Cork islands, lying 40 minutes by ferry off the coast from Baltimore. Unlike Sherkin, its near neighbour, Chléire’s terrain is rugged, marked by craggy cliffs and infamous hills. The island is also a Gaeltacht region, with Irish being the main language spoken.
Oilean Chléire is one of the few (if perhaps not the only) West Cork islands that has a community garden (Gairdín Pobail), and it’s this we’ve come to visit. On a blue wooden pallet at its entrance are rows of two- and one-litre plastic milk containers. They sit sweltering in the sun, but the liquid inside is not white and milky. It’s a light green, resembling pond or bog water. The containers are waiting to be collected by members of the island community. In taking back one of the recycled plastic cartons, islanders will be recovering energy that they themselves have generated; energy spilled over, gathered back in.
1. Recycled milk jugs containing liquid fertiliser generated by the MyGug from community food waste.
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2. Blue sacks filling with biogas behind the Gug.
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The liquid inside the containers was created using a MyGug. Invented by Ciarán Coffey from Clonakilty, the device is a biodigester that takes organic household waste and breaks it down through anaerobic digestion into two valuable resources - the liquid fertiliser in the milk containers, and natural gas that can be used for cooking. The Gug itself resembles a small black rocket ship, sitting just inside the community garden gate. Behind it, three large, blue plastic sacks sit on the ground, breathing gently.
Ciaran: People don't realise how much energy there is in food waste
Saoirse: How much energy is there in food waste?
Ciaran: Well, I suppose the best way to think of it - a normal household of four or five people … could get one to two hours of cooking a day from their food waste.
Saoirse: That’s mad. So tell us, what's the categories - what’s the most kind of energy - like a potato?
Ciaran: Potato would be bad. Anything that has a lot of starch, carbohydrates...proteins, oil, will produce a lot of gas. So obviously you throw a cake into a digester, it'll produce an awful lot. If you throw a lettuce ... or a cabbage in, it won't produce very much.
Saoirse: Okay. So it’s a bit like your diet. Anything that'll put on the pounds will make ... a lot of gas. What about beans?
Ciaran: Yeah, beans. Beans would make a bit ... because of the amount of protein in beans. So yeah, they produce. But things like oily waste, bread, sugar, cake, all that sort of stuff will produce a lot of gas.
Saoirse: Okay. And what is the gas?
Ciaran: The gas is, it's termed biogas and it's a combination of methane and carbon dioxide ... usually it's sort of between 60, 65% methane ... and 35, 40% carbon dioxide. And ... there's trace amounts of other small, small bits, but not very much. So, two hours of cooking time for a family of, say, four.
Extract from a filmed interview between artist Saoirse Higgins and Ciarán Coffey, MyGug inventor. 12th June 2026 at the community garden.
Mary O’Driscoll, one of the island residents behind the Gairdín Pobail initiative, explains that the sacks are filling with gas generated by the Gug and, when full, will be light enough to be lifted easily by hand and transported to where they’re needed on the island. One is used by the island’s bird observatory, one of the best known observatories in the country, which has been consistently tracking migratory bird activity on the island since 1959.
There’s an air of the laboratory about the community garden - the mysterious green liquid, the gently breathing plastic sacks - and I remember something artist Saoirse Higgins said in conversation with me, about the idea of ‘island as petri dish’; the practice of taking islands as testing grounds, as happened with the Clare Island and Lambay Island surveys in the early 20th century.
There’s an air of the laboratory about the community garden - the mysterious green liquid, the gently breathing plastic sacks - and I remember something artist Saoirse Higgins said in conversation with me, about the idea of ‘island as petri dish’; the practice of taking islands as testing grounds, as happened with the Clare Island and Lambay Island surveys in the early 20th century.
3. View across North Harbour. From here to there. Film still.
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4. View from Gleann Hill down to South Bay. Film still.
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Saoirse is one of the five Ocean & Environment artists working across the seven inhabited West Cork islands, and has taken Oilean Chléire as her focus. She completed a practice-based PhD in 2020, looking partly at the idea of island as testing ground, and she describes the factors that make islands suited to this: that the chain of effect between an action and its impact is much shorter, that there is more responsibility within the population for an action. (1) Most obviously, islands are bounded by water, providing to some extent a ‘controlled’ environment.
Oilean Chléire has been the ‘trial island’ for a number of pilots over the years, primarily ones that were externally initiated. When the Rural Electrification Scheme was lighting up the country between 1946 and the early 1970s, Chléire was not connected up to the grid, instead being provided with two diesel generators by the ESB. In the 1980s, a German company (SMA Regelsysteme) selected Cape as a location for “testing the feasibility of wind-powered electricity”, (2) and erected two windmills on the island’s tallest hill. These windmills provided 60% of the island’s electricity needs, the remainder coming from the generators. As Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil describes it in his recent book Blúirí Oileánda (Island Pieces) (2026), “Cape Clear was seen as an example of the successful application of renewable and sustainable energy generation in a discrete community, a template that could be followed elsewhere.” (3) Frustratingly, when SMA Regelsysteme decided to withdraw from the scheme a few years later and offered management of it to the ESB, they refused, meaning the island lost its source of renewable, local energy. This was despite the islanders campaigning to keep the working turbines.
In 2001, Cape was also chosen as a location to test the viability of a government bus service to isolated rural areas that were not served by Bus Éireann. The service was welcomed by the islanders, who had already been looking into buying a minibus for the island to provide a form of community transport. The enthusiasm of the Chléire community for the service secured the scheme countrywide. “The uptake of the service during the pilot phase led to the establishment of the Rural Transport Initiative (RTI) in 2002, a countrywide scheme that included Cape Clear.” (4)
Oilean Chléire has been the ‘trial island’ for a number of pilots over the years, primarily ones that were externally initiated. When the Rural Electrification Scheme was lighting up the country between 1946 and the early 1970s, Chléire was not connected up to the grid, instead being provided with two diesel generators by the ESB. In the 1980s, a German company (SMA Regelsysteme) selected Cape as a location for “testing the feasibility of wind-powered electricity”, (2) and erected two windmills on the island’s tallest hill. These windmills provided 60% of the island’s electricity needs, the remainder coming from the generators. As Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil describes it in his recent book Blúirí Oileánda (Island Pieces) (2026), “Cape Clear was seen as an example of the successful application of renewable and sustainable energy generation in a discrete community, a template that could be followed elsewhere.” (3) Frustratingly, when SMA Regelsysteme decided to withdraw from the scheme a few years later and offered management of it to the ESB, they refused, meaning the island lost its source of renewable, local energy. This was despite the islanders campaigning to keep the working turbines.
In 2001, Cape was also chosen as a location to test the viability of a government bus service to isolated rural areas that were not served by Bus Éireann. The service was welcomed by the islanders, who had already been looking into buying a minibus for the island to provide a form of community transport. The enthusiasm of the Chléire community for the service secured the scheme countrywide. “The uptake of the service during the pilot phase led to the establishment of the Rural Transport Initiative (RTI) in 2002, a countrywide scheme that included Cape Clear.” (4)
5. Highest point on island. Old wind turbine in the background. Film still.
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6. Wind turbine archaeology. Film still.
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The Oilean Chléire MyGug project in a way continues this legacy of ‘island as testing ground’, but it’s a project that has been entirely initiated from within the island community, rather than by an external entity. The MyGug changes the landscape of waste on the island. While many of the offshore islands are hooked up to the water and electricity supply coming from the mainland, most (if not all) lack a system of waste collection. Rubbish must be brought to the mainland on the ferry and dealt with there. This presents a particular challenge for food waste, especially cooked food, and ‘red’ waste such as meat and oil.
Historically, islands naturally operated within a circular waste economy. Their resources came from the immediate locality, out of necessity. Water came from wells and springs on the islands. Food was grown or reared on the island itself, or fished from the sea around it, removing the need for packaging. It seems plausible to assume that food waste was almost non-existent (before the advent of our current globalised food system), but any that was produced was returned to the soil or fed to animals.
People largely survived directly from what was around them, their material resources coming from the sea and the land on which they lived. Though not always comfortable or free from hardship, this way of life managed to sustain nearly ten times the population in 1841 as make Oilean Chléire their home today. The population now sits at just over 100 people, the lowest it’s been since records began in 1841, when the population stood at over 1,000.
The reasons for island depopulation are complex. Speaking to Diarmuid, he suggests a major cause is the contemporary desire for more from life than an island can offer. If there is an operating primary school on an island, children still leave when it comes to second level, and university extends that absence, with many not returning.
Historically, islands naturally operated within a circular waste economy. Their resources came from the immediate locality, out of necessity. Water came from wells and springs on the islands. Food was grown or reared on the island itself, or fished from the sea around it, removing the need for packaging. It seems plausible to assume that food waste was almost non-existent (before the advent of our current globalised food system), but any that was produced was returned to the soil or fed to animals.
People largely survived directly from what was around them, their material resources coming from the sea and the land on which they lived. Though not always comfortable or free from hardship, this way of life managed to sustain nearly ten times the population in 1841 as make Oilean Chléire their home today. The population now sits at just over 100 people, the lowest it’s been since records began in 1841, when the population stood at over 1,000.
The reasons for island depopulation are complex. Speaking to Diarmuid, he suggests a major cause is the contemporary desire for more from life than an island can offer. If there is an operating primary school on an island, children still leave when it comes to second level, and university extends that absence, with many not returning.
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7 & 8. 31st January 2026, after Storm Chandra. Ferry Cape clear to Baltimore. 'To' the mainland. Film stills.
But underneath the question of culture and social relations, is the question of material sustainability, and how that impacts the feasibility of living on the offshore islands. What Mary O’Driscoll is pioneering with the community garden on Chléire looks both backwards and forwards; harking back to a time on the island when nothing was wasted and resources were local, while looking forward by embracing new technologies. The liquid fertiliser produced by the MyGug is used by residents in their own gardens, as well as in the community polytunnel for growing vegetables. What was a ‘problem’ in the community has now become a resource.
What is truly sustainable about the project is its scale - it’s responding to a waste issue within the community, at the scale of the issue. This contrasts sharply with Ireland’s national biomethane strategy, published in May 2024, which also proposes using the anaerobic digestion process to generate energy, with the potential to ‘decarbonise’ Ireland’s natural gas network. But, as Niamh Donnelly points out in the December 2025 issue of Rundale, this national strategy is focused on developing industrial scale biogas production, with targets that would most likely mean transitioning land into planting energy crops in order to feed the system.
Niamh asks the question of whether this amounts to a form of ‘green extractivism’; the development of a new industry with its own infrastructure, rather than a green solution to an existing waste issue. Niamh advocates for a ‘waste-first’, community-led model for developing a biogas network, governed by ecological limits. This would be one that doesn’t put additional pressure on rural communities. As she points out, “without strong community consent mechanisms, revenue-sharing, and cumulative impact assessments, rural areas can become sacrifice zones in pursuit of national energy targets.” (5)
What is truly sustainable about the project is its scale - it’s responding to a waste issue within the community, at the scale of the issue. This contrasts sharply with Ireland’s national biomethane strategy, published in May 2024, which also proposes using the anaerobic digestion process to generate energy, with the potential to ‘decarbonise’ Ireland’s natural gas network. But, as Niamh Donnelly points out in the December 2025 issue of Rundale, this national strategy is focused on developing industrial scale biogas production, with targets that would most likely mean transitioning land into planting energy crops in order to feed the system.
Niamh asks the question of whether this amounts to a form of ‘green extractivism’; the development of a new industry with its own infrastructure, rather than a green solution to an existing waste issue. Niamh advocates for a ‘waste-first’, community-led model for developing a biogas network, governed by ecological limits. This would be one that doesn’t put additional pressure on rural communities. As she points out, “without strong community consent mechanisms, revenue-sharing, and cumulative impact assessments, rural areas can become sacrifice zones in pursuit of national energy targets.” (5)
7. MyGug information board.
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8. Gairdín Pobail sign.
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Closing the loop on waste is one part of the picture; food security or resilience is another. The practice of growing your own food has all but disappeared on Chléire now. Some of the women who now have a patch in the polytunnel in the Gairdín Pobail would have grown in their gardens in years gone by. There is a small shop on the island, but most of the food comes in from the mainland, as is the case with most of the other offshore islands.
This system, where the islands are reliant on resources coming from the mainland and islanders can no longer sustain themselves at a basic level from the land that surrounds them, reflects in microcosm how we live on the mainland. Over 80% of the food we consume in Ireland is imported, despite the fact that the majority of land in the country (over 70%) is in farmland. This is because the majority of that 70% is being farmed for export (beef and dairy). Essentially, this means most of the land in the country is in commercial production, and not feeding the people living here. (6)
When researching his book, Diarmuid took a sort-of inventory of different objects and practices that define Oilean Chléire for him. One of these was stiles (dreapa), another bracken (raithneach). The two are closely connected in what they communicate about the changing landscape of the island. There are lots of old stone stiles on the island, some with their own names, which provide access across boundaries for walkers. However, many of them have faded from memory and use, as islanders now favour movement by car and the walking trails have become steadily swallowed up by the bracken. Diarmuid attributes this spread of the dominating plant, which browns and collapses in the winter, smothering fields, to the decline of farming with hand tools, the loss of an intimate relationship with the land. “Traditionally, all farm work was done by hand, and productive land was used to the maximum, with potatoes and other vegetables, oats, wheat, mangolds and hay for animal fodder, being widely grown… Farming practice has changed, there are new priorities and most people are no longer happy to live a life of subsistence farming, a style of farming and land husbandry that on Cape Clear kept fields clear of unwanted plants like bracken.” (7)
Again, this pattern on Oilean Chléire, the loss of an intimate, physical relationship with the landscape through direct use, direct dependence, is echoed on the mainland, where the vast majority of farming is now done using large, fossil-fuel-dependent machinery. This means large swathes of the country see no interaction from humans, and are deserts for other forms of life, with extremely poor biodiversity.
At a time when geopolitical instability, and a changing and volatile climate, threaten global food supply chains, Ireland exists in a state of deep food insecurity. Projects like the Oilean Chléire MyGug initiative offer working examples of how we can start to turn towards more local systems of sustainability, looking both backwards and forwards; how we can value and use what is directly around us, at a local level, and so start to repair our broken relationship with the landscape and environment we depend on.
This system, where the islands are reliant on resources coming from the mainland and islanders can no longer sustain themselves at a basic level from the land that surrounds them, reflects in microcosm how we live on the mainland. Over 80% of the food we consume in Ireland is imported, despite the fact that the majority of land in the country (over 70%) is in farmland. This is because the majority of that 70% is being farmed for export (beef and dairy). Essentially, this means most of the land in the country is in commercial production, and not feeding the people living here. (6)
When researching his book, Diarmuid took a sort-of inventory of different objects and practices that define Oilean Chléire for him. One of these was stiles (dreapa), another bracken (raithneach). The two are closely connected in what they communicate about the changing landscape of the island. There are lots of old stone stiles on the island, some with their own names, which provide access across boundaries for walkers. However, many of them have faded from memory and use, as islanders now favour movement by car and the walking trails have become steadily swallowed up by the bracken. Diarmuid attributes this spread of the dominating plant, which browns and collapses in the winter, smothering fields, to the decline of farming with hand tools, the loss of an intimate relationship with the land. “Traditionally, all farm work was done by hand, and productive land was used to the maximum, with potatoes and other vegetables, oats, wheat, mangolds and hay for animal fodder, being widely grown… Farming practice has changed, there are new priorities and most people are no longer happy to live a life of subsistence farming, a style of farming and land husbandry that on Cape Clear kept fields clear of unwanted plants like bracken.” (7)
Again, this pattern on Oilean Chléire, the loss of an intimate, physical relationship with the landscape through direct use, direct dependence, is echoed on the mainland, where the vast majority of farming is now done using large, fossil-fuel-dependent machinery. This means large swathes of the country see no interaction from humans, and are deserts for other forms of life, with extremely poor biodiversity.
At a time when geopolitical instability, and a changing and volatile climate, threaten global food supply chains, Ireland exists in a state of deep food insecurity. Projects like the Oilean Chléire MyGug initiative offer working examples of how we can start to turn towards more local systems of sustainability, looking both backwards and forwards; how we can value and use what is directly around us, at a local level, and so start to repair our broken relationship with the landscape and environment we depend on.
9. Field's supermarket delivery Thursday by ferry. Film still.
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10. Time lapse travelling to and from. Film still.
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References
(1) Saoirse Higgins completed her practice-based PhD in 2020 at the Glasgow School of Art, School of Innovation and Technology, funded by the Highlands and Islands Creative Enterprise. Her research addresses our engagement with the environment in the specific context of islands, islanders and the Anthropocene; exploring micro-macro scales of time and ‘trickle-up’ action for change. Saoirse's PhD can be viewed here.
(2) Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil, Blúirí Oileánda (Island Pieces), 2026, p. 144.
(3) As above.
(4) Ó Drisceoil, p. 120.
(5) Niamh Donnelly, 'Ireland's Biogas Boom: A New Frontier for Green Extractivism?', Rundale, December 2025, https://www.rundale.org/2025/12/01/irelands-biogas-boom-a-new-frontier-for-green-extractivism/
(6) Environmental Protection Agency / Government of Ireland, 'Land Use Review, Phase 1', 2023, https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/land-use-evidence-review-synthesis-report.pdf
(7) Ó Drisceoil, p. 49.
Words
Rachel Donnelly
Images
Cover image - South point on the island, the southern-most point of Ireland, drone film still, Jonathan Ford, April 2026
All other images and captions - Saoirse Higgins
Except 1, 2, 7 and 8 - Rachel, and 6 - Jonathan Ford
This is the third in a series of written reflections that follows the Ocean & Environment projects as they unfold over 2026/2027, connecting the themes of the project across the islands to wider questions of how to build resilience in the face of climate change.
The Ocean & Environment artists are Samuel Arnold Keane, William Bock, Eoin Heaney, Saoirse Higgins and Louise Manifold. Writer in residence for the project is Rachel Donnelly.
This essay is a commission supported by Cork County Council's Creative Places West Cork Islands programme, under its Ocean & Environment initiative. With thanks to the West Cork Islands Creative Places Partnership for their continued support.
(1) Saoirse Higgins completed her practice-based PhD in 2020 at the Glasgow School of Art, School of Innovation and Technology, funded by the Highlands and Islands Creative Enterprise. Her research addresses our engagement with the environment in the specific context of islands, islanders and the Anthropocene; exploring micro-macro scales of time and ‘trickle-up’ action for change. Saoirse's PhD can be viewed here.
(2) Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil, Blúirí Oileánda (Island Pieces), 2026, p. 144.
(3) As above.
(4) Ó Drisceoil, p. 120.
(5) Niamh Donnelly, 'Ireland's Biogas Boom: A New Frontier for Green Extractivism?', Rundale, December 2025, https://www.rundale.org/2025/12/01/irelands-biogas-boom-a-new-frontier-for-green-extractivism/
(6) Environmental Protection Agency / Government of Ireland, 'Land Use Review, Phase 1', 2023, https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/land-use-evidence-review-synthesis-report.pdf
(7) Ó Drisceoil, p. 49.
Words
Rachel Donnelly
Images
Cover image - South point on the island, the southern-most point of Ireland, drone film still, Jonathan Ford, April 2026
All other images and captions - Saoirse Higgins
Except 1, 2, 7 and 8 - Rachel, and 6 - Jonathan Ford
This is the third in a series of written reflections that follows the Ocean & Environment projects as they unfold over 2026/2027, connecting the themes of the project across the islands to wider questions of how to build resilience in the face of climate change.
The Ocean & Environment artists are Samuel Arnold Keane, William Bock, Eoin Heaney, Saoirse Higgins and Louise Manifold. Writer in residence for the project is Rachel Donnelly.
This essay is a commission supported by Cork County Council's Creative Places West Cork Islands programme, under its Ocean & Environment initiative. With thanks to the West Cork Islands Creative Places Partnership for their continued support.