The Office of Public Works is facing a High Court challenge over the award of licences to boat owners who bring visitors to Skellig Michael off the Co Kerry coast.
The island, a Unesco world heritage site, includes an early Christian monastic settlement, dating from the 6th century. While it remains a place of pilgrimage and veneration, it has also appeared in a number of films in the Hollywood blockbuster franchise Star Wars, adding to its international appeal.
On Monday of this week a company, Atlantic Endeavour Ltd, initiated a High Court judicial review action against the OPW.
The action is understood to relate to the issuing of landing licences to boat owners for the coming Skellig Michael visitor season, which traditionally runs from mid-May to the end of September or the first week in October.
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Boat owners in the area who have taken Government administrators, including ministers for heritage and transport, to court over access to the island in the past, are understood to be unconvinced that the criteria adopted by OPW were clear, objective and transparent.
The website for the Atlantic Endeavour was still advertising trips on Tuesday, pointing out that it was the “only landing boat that leaves from the Skellig Experience Museum on Valentia Island”.
Skipper Timmy Casey, who operates the Atlantic Endeavour boat, was out of the country on Tuesday and unavailable to answer questions on the current judicial review.
Sources close to the dispute described Mr Casey as a skipper of more than three decades experience whose boat met all of legal and regulatory requirements set by the Department of Transport. Mr Casey and the Atlantic Endeavour were licensed by the OPW last year to land passengers on the island and also to tour the island without landing when the weather was inclement.
Sources said there was considerable shock when the 2025 list of approved vessels was published by the OPW in recent weeks.
The OPW was asked for a comment on the licensing situation and one is anticipated.
The case is the latest in a series of litigation and difficulties experienced by boat owners, and administrators in recent years.
In 2016 boatman Sean Feehan successfully challenged the revocation of permits allowing him to land visitors on Skellig Michael. Mr Feehan of Dunegan, Ballinskelligs said he had been taking passengers to the site since 1980. He won “orders on consent” in a settlement with the OPW.
Visitors to the island face a hazardous climb to the part where monks built beehive-shaped huts from stone in which to live. Steps hewn from the rock do not have hand or guard rails for much of the distance and there have been fatalities on the island in the past.
In 2010 the OPW sought to compel boat owners to chose a single departure point for boats visiting the island. However, the private ferry operators ruled that out for the 12km journey to the Unesco world heritage site.
[ The warden of Skellig Michael: ‘I have seen people just start bawling crying’Opens in new window ]
The ending of the “multiplicity” of departure sites was one of the key recommendations of an independent safety review commissioned by the OPW following the separate deaths of two American tourists there in 2009.
