Who wants to save Oilean Thoraigh?

'Toraigh/Tory Island... is accepted by all authorities as the most solidly Irish community in Donegal', writes Reg Hindley in The Death of the Irish language (1990: 68). But Hindley knows how difficult life on these islands is. 'Small islands'. he observes, 'suffer the extremes of Gaeltacht deprivation, i.e. lack of ready access to urban amenities as well as doctors and hospitals, and are inclined to panic when emigration leaves them with too few men to man a boat. Two-way radios and emergency helicopters have allayed the worst fears. Now that secondary schooling is expected it usually involves boarding on the mainland and leads to skills which bar ultimate return to the island. The television, now in every home, wildly inflates the islanders' ideas of what they are missing'. Tory Island is dying. Gradually, the island is being abandoned, as has happened to so many other islands on the west coast of Ireland. This paper looks at the recent history of the island, and more specifically at the attempts that have been made to save it.