Emer McLysaght: Finally someone is stepping up and making Love Island in the Gaeltacht

There’s a certain flavour of Irish weather that screams Gaeltacht. A day that’s not particularly warm but tepid enough to make the inside of your raincoat sweat. The rain is the wettest it’s ever been and yet falls invisibly. Somebody somewhere has lit a fire and the smell coming down in the drizzle activates memories of summers spent up and down the west coast of Ireland, traipsing in the rain to the coláiste for another day of ranganna and rince (college, classes and dance for those without the cúpla focal).

Smells are powerful memory triggers but there’s another source that sets off the Gaeltacht nostalgia in me: Love Island. The TV show throws together a group of randy young people in an intense and unfamiliar setting where they become quickly institutionalised. They fall easily into strange rituals, develop fierce friendships and try to rub up against each other and drop the lámh at every turn.

The only difference is that on Love Island, the overlords are encouraging as much gob-lobbing as possible, while in the Gaeltacht, every stray hand is slapped away before you can say “ciúnas, bóthar, cailín, bainne”.

[ Bring back Love Island’s Irish contestants. The British ones can be, er, less than self-aware ]

Just when it seemed preposterously overdue, Virgin Media announced it is producing a TV show that combines both scenarios – the Gaeltacht and Love Island. Grá ar an Trá is currently recruiting single people to shoot this summer and will undoubtedly have all the glamour of the Love Island villa with the added element of brushing up on their Gaeilge or maybe even learning it for the first time. Nothing says romance like verbs, tenses and the tuiseal ginideach. Love Island is punctuated with challenges and dates, and Grá ar an Trá will be seeking to replicate those experiences.

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It shouldn’t be difficult given the Love Island recoupling rituals are already just like the nightly céilís. It takes just as much courage to take Josh as your partner around the South African firepit as it does to ask Conchuir – Conor to his mates back in Leixlip – to join you for the second Ballaí Luimní of the evening.

I attended various different Irish summer colleges up and down the west coast and have a berserk and precious cache of memories. I only have to hear the opening bars of November Rain and I’m transported back to slow dancing – with several feet of room left between us for Muire Máthair – in an ancient church in Gweedore when an uninvited bat caused near hysteria. It was a fairly laid-back set-up so we were allowed to indulge in the odd bit of Béarla and the disco every Saturday night provided our weekly dose of tunes in English.

I was only 10 when I was first sent to Donegal and got burnt to a crisp on the beach due to a lax early 1990s attitude to suncream and a dearth of anyone to assume responsibility. I remember summers of watching Olympic highlights or World Cup matches with the sound turned all the way down, and one house where banana ice cream was served twice a day for three weeks.

In my later teens, I went to a much stricter Connemara outfit and, with some fellow housemates, would barricade myself in a bedroom to enjoy “Club Béarla” for a few precious minutes every day. We’d whisper in English under a duvet and listen to a song on a smuggled discman. We had sentries on the door and a well-thumbed copy of Just Seventeen magazine to pass around. The Love Island equivalent might be the terrace, where couples go to gossip or declare an illicit connection.

One thing Love Island is missing is the Bean an Tí, a surrogate mother figure producing vats of vegetable soup and driven demented by 2am giggling. It has its own benevolent unseen overlord who provides food and microphone batteries but is unlikely to teach the entire Apostles Creed as Gaeilge.

Maybe the most precise comparison to be drawn between the Gaeltacht and Love Island is the intensity of the goodbyes. I remember leaving my three weeks in Galway or Donegal crying like we were all going off to the gallows rather than just back to Blessington or Navan, with plans for a reunion in a fortnight. Similar dramatics are on display on Love Island and while it’s fodder for sneering, it’s also understandable given the close conditions they live under.

Here’s hoping Grá ar an Trá can capture the patriotic fervour of singing the national anthem three times a day, and the ferocity of friendships and connections.