The Carna/Cill Chiaráin Yearbook, One of Connemara’s longest-running annual community publications, has been published this week.
This year’s edition has a focus on developments planned for the local secondary school in Carna and on a plan for a total upgrading of facilities by the local GAA club. It also features an article on the proposed offshore wind farm at Sceirde Rocks.
The yearly publication is known as Iorras Aithneach and that is the windy peninsula that edges into the Atlantic in the Carna and Cill Chiaráin area. It is a community publication and this year it features one of the most groundbreaking stories since it was launched in 1990.
Nine miles directly west in the Atlantic Ocean there are storied rocks; in English, they are known as the Skerd Rocks but locally there are known as Skeirde. The seas can be fearsome out there but an Australian-backed company known as Corio is ready to invest a billion euros on a wind farm in that windswept ocean.
The company states in this Iorras Aithneach Yearbook that a community fund worth millions will also be available, when, they start producing power.
The project, as planned, would provide power for 350,000 households.
There would be 200 jobs in the construction phase in what would be a major logistical enterprise of the Connemara coast.
2028 is seen as a likely completion date depending on permits.