The Great Blasket Island caretaker role is accepting applications for a few more days ahead of the 2024 season.
Billy O'Connor and Alice Hayes, who own the holiday cottages and coffee shop on the Great Blasket Island, say that the application form for the 2024 Great Blasket Island caretaker role will be closing on January 18.
The online application form for the Great Blasket Island Caretaker Role can be found here.
Happy New Year!
For anyone interested in the 2024 Great Blasket Island accommodation and coffee shop caretakers position, we will be closing the application form on the 18th January 💫.
— Great Blasket Island (@gbisland) January 9, 2024
Thank you so much and if you have any questions please email gbicaretakers@gmail.com 🙏. pic.twitter.com/BNGD1ik1bh
The Great Blasket Island caretaker role, which runs from April 1 through October 1, involves managing the coffee shop and the four holiday cottages on the Great Blasket Island off the coast of Co Kerry.
Billy and Alice seek a duo who are “hardworking, responsible, and trustworthy” and “have great people skills and initiative" for the caretaker role.
They caution: “Please be aware this is not a holiday job. The season can get VERY busy and you will be on your feet for most of the day.”
While the caretaker role is no “holiday job,” there certainly are some perks. Aside from it being a once-in-a-lifetime experience in perhaps one of the most beautiful places in the world, all food and board is included in the position on top of wages.
However, the living is simple - there is no electricity or hot running water on the island.
Staff will sleep above the coffee shop and share the main bedroom (hence why looking for a couple) and use the coffee shop kitchen and toilets as their own. Laundry will be collected and washed on the mainland, and food shops will be delivered daily.
During the busier months – June, July, and August – there will be one or two voluntary helpers who will sleep in the second upstairs bedroom.
Applicants must be fluent in English, though Billy and Alice note that it would be “great” if they had Irish. Non-EU citizens will need a valid working visa.
For the 2023 season, Emily Campbell, who is originally from Cork, and her boyfriend Daniel Regan, from London, beat thousands of applicants to land the highly coveted role.
Campbell and Regan chronicled their time on the Great Blasket Island on their joint Instagram account @greatblasketcaretakers.
View this post on Instagram
The couple recently featured on the UK program "Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild," which noted that the position had drawn some 40,000 applications.
January blues hitting hard... 🥹
This couple traded the chaos of London living to become the sole guardians of a remote island, living there completely alone! 🗺️📺 Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, Tuesdays at 9pm@Benfogle pic.twitter.com/3fwCnDHQkK
— Channel 5 (@channel5_tv) January 8, 2024
The Great Blasket Island (An Blascaod Mór in Irish) is the main island in the group of six off the coast of the Dingle Peninsula in Co Kerry. The other five islands are Beiginis (Beginish), Inis na Bró (Inishabro), Inis Mhic Uileáin (Inishvickillane), Inis Tuaisceart (Inishtooskert), and An Tiaracht (Tearaght Island).
The group of islands was inhabited for centuries by a small but close-knit Irish-speaking population who followed a traditional way of life – farming, fishing, weaving – and eventually became the subjects of important linguistic studies for their use of a largely unchanged version of the Irish language.
At its peak, Great Blasket Island had only some 175 residents, but their cultural output was immense, including important Irish language works such as “An tOileánach" (“The Islander") by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, “Fiche Bliain Ag Fás” ("Twenty Years a-Growing") by Maurice O’Sullivan, and "Peig," by Peig Sayers.
In 1953, however, the last remaining inhabitants of the Blasket Islands were permanently evacuated to the mainland.
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