In August 1986, former Taoiseach Charles Haughey was rescued from the rocks beneath Mizen Head, Ireland's most south-westerly point, when his yacht, Celtic Mist, was damaged in a storm. At a press briefing shortly afterwards, he vowed that as long as he had anything to do with it, Irish lighthouses would remain manned.
Such are promises. Grateful as he and his crew were to the lighthouse staff at the Mizen who plucked them to safety at great personal risk, by April 1993, the last lighthouse keepers had left the station. It had become unmanned and fully automated.
If Mr Haughey or other seafarers were to run aground there now, help would not be at hand so readily. Many thought that with no human presence, the Mizen Head Fog Signal Station would become a forlorn sentinel like the other lighthouses around our coast. But plans were afoot locally to ensure that would not happen.
At the weekend, the Mizen Head Visitor Centre, built on one of the most spectacular sites Ireland has to offer, celebrated with a party that had to be postponed last year because of the foot-and-mouth emergency.
Despite the downturn in tourism during the past year, the centre managed to attract almost 50,000 visitors, and there are plans to increase that figure to 100,000 people a year.
The centre is a triumph for local enthusiasm and doggedness, and in particular, for the vision of local restaurateur and guesthouse owner Ms Sue Hill of Heron's Cove.
Once the Mizen lighthouse was automated, the Commissioners of Irish Lights agreed a lease with the Mizen Tourism Co-Operative Society. From small beginnings, centred around a portacabin, the visitors' complex has grown to a €952,000 facility funded by the West Cork Leader Programme, Bord Fáilte/ERDF, Cork Co Council and the National Millennium Committee. In a sense, the centre completes the circle, bringing the history of Mizen Head as a beacon for seafarers since the early 1900s into the high-tech era.
The new centre takes safety at sea as its theme, concentrating heavily on the use of modern technology in marine matters but also chronicling the role of the Mizen Head station down the years when the lightkeepers, as Mr Haughey found out, played a vital safety role.
Mizen Head now has a differential geo positioning satellite (DGPS) mast, a quantum jump in sophistication from the first radio beacon in Ireland, built in 1931.
Visitors would be attracted to Mizen anyway simply because it is there, because it offers such breathtaking views at the edge of Ireland, and because this is where you can see whales, seals and dolphins cavorting in Irish waters, and wild birds on migratory passage.
The automatic weather station (AWS) installed by Mizen Tourism, provides Met Éireann with vital coastal information.
But when it comes to high technology, it is hard to beat the navigational aids simulator, the first commercial one in Ireland. This is a simulated ship's bridge which re-creates the approaches to seven European ports, including Dublin, throwing in a variety of weather conditions and ships' movements to boot.
The simulator will let you know what it's like to run a huge vessel aground with several hundred people on board, as it enters port, and gives an authentic feel for the crunching sound you might expect to hear if your qualities as a skipper in a tight situation were lacking. It is registered for accredited training purposes, and according to Ms Hill, will be used for specialised courses in all aspects of navigation.When the system is expanded, it will also include a visualisation of the journey from Fastnet into Bantry Bay. The training is organised by Charternav and Mizen Tourism.
The centre has its own café and shop and part of the attraction is negotiating the spectacular bridge over the gorge which leads to the former Irish Lights Signal Station. The keepers' kitchen and bedroom have been retained and there is a maps and archives room, a history of the numerous wrecks around the Mizen and a plan of the ecology and heritage of the Mizen Peninsula. The next and final phase of the development will cost about €1.2 million and will include a tower with observation post, another interpretive building/classroom, a research area and a revamp of the keepers' quarters.
The weekend party was attended by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, who was instrumental in securing European funding for the project and by Mr Maurice Moloney, Cork county manager. A special guest at the celebration was Mr Tom Barry, aged 106, who is believed to be Ireland's oldest man. Mr Barry's life has spanned the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and all of it has been spent at Caher, near Mizen Peak.