All Set for the Protest Walk

Its Thursday evening and only a few more days until we gather at the village shop in Fenit at 1pm and then proceed to walk to Fenit Island Castle. The amount of support the campaign is receiving is overwhelming, national TV stations have been in contact, all the local politicians and TD's are fully behind the campaign to have offending fencing removed in Fenit Island. The social media campaign is receiving support from as far away as South Africa and Chile, massive amounts of supportive emails being sent to the new website. The new website was set up because the last facebook page was removed by facebook, obviously the landowners in question did not like all the publicity and then kept repeatedly reporting the page as offensive, pretty sad, do they think that because facebook took down the page everything would just go quiet?? How wrong they were, this just strengthens the resolve of everyone involved and garners more support, which is exactly what happened. The new website is fantastic and the amount of hits its getting is amazing. Today Kerry's Eye saw fit to put the story in the front page. Its such a pity the landowners in question will not enter into discussions with the committee, but it seems they are not for budging, but then neither is the whole community, the fight will go on until the fencing that blocks an age old right of way to the castle is removed.

Some Interesting Facts

The trouble in Fenit Island began in 2006 when Kerry County Council put a road for all the landowners to use to gain access to their respective land holdings. This road was built on land provided by several landowners and there was no charge or fee sought by these landowners, they provided this land in good faith. However when kerry Co Co completed the roadway 3 landowners namely O'Sullivan, Murphy and Mc Carthy's began stopping the general public from walking around Fenit Island, some of these people who had been stopped included members of the families who gave up their lands in generosity. There are nine landowners in Fenit Island and six of these have no issue with people walking around Fenit Island. As people have walked around Fenit Island for hundreds of years it was generally accepted by everyone that there was a right of way to Fenit Island castle. Also in Fenit Island you have the birth place of St Brendan, old ruins of two churches, ruins of a graveyard and some of the most beautiful scenery in Kerry.
The issues that has caused uproar in the local community is the erection of "Fort Knox" type fencing at the back of the island. People have no real issue with the three landowners fencing off their fields and farmland, apart from this fencing spoiling the landscape, but it is fencing running perpendicular to their lands down on to the shoreline, on rocks and cliffs which makes for safe walking on the coastal pathway almost impossible. There are lots of large warning signs located at several spots at the back of the island warning people that they may be prosecuted even though they may be walking along the shoreline and rocks.
Intimidation
For generations locals and tourists have walked the island and enjoyed fishing at the castle without incident, but in the last fifteen years people have been harassed, bullied and intimidated aggressively for walking into the island, some of these incidents even took place on other farmers property (these farmers that have no issue with people walking)
A lot of these people were issued with solicitors letters for trespassing, these letters all came from the one solicitors firm in Ennis, the firm owned by Mr Sullivan. Mr Sullivan began his aggressive behaviour to people walking soon after he inherited his uncles farm, up to then there was never any issues with people walking around Fenit Island.

The harassment and intimidation got progressively worse over the years and it all came to a head at Christmas when the first protest walk was organised. The whole community are outraged with what is happening in Fenit Island and all the local politicians are fully supporting the campaign to have the right of way restored to the castle.