Remote Irish Isle Seems Doomed by Time : Europe: Population on Inishbiggle is down to 62--all unemployed. Younger residents have left for easier lives, so they don’t have to brave treacherous waves just to get to the store.

When the winds roar in the Bullsmouth, Father Michael O’Horo cannot cross to Inishbiggle for Sunday Mass.

The hardy islanders on the western edge of Ireland may have to wait up to three weeks before the cruel Atlantic weather relents and he can make the treacherous five-minute crossing.

Bullsmouth is an apt name for the narrow strait with its killer currents and deadly winds that isolate a vanishing corner of Ireland that faces oblivion.

Inishbiggle has no bar, no grocery store, no school. Derelict cottages dot the desolate landscape, mute witness to an ancient way of life that could die out by the turn of the century.

None of the 62 islanders has a job. Tuesday is the big day of the week, when all come to the post office to collect their unemployment checks from 65-year-old postmistress Bridget O’Malley.

“Sixty-two people are left on the island,” she said. “There were 90 when I came 42 years ago. Some have gone to England, some to the mainland. One family went to the United States.

“The island is dying on its feet. I don’t know what can be done to save it. But I am happy to see out my days here.”

Her dog jumped up to chase the ducks and guinea fowl that have strayed from her neighbor’s yard and waddled through the front door.

Across the road, Tim and Susan Calvey brought hope to the island when they returned from England to live in Inishbiggle.

Their two older children, Jordan, 8, and Chelsea, 7, pull the straps of their school bags over life jackets when they set off each morning for the crossing to Achill Island by currach, a flimsy canvas boat that looks barely able to withstand the pounding waves.

Next winter their youngest child, Patsy, starts school and they may rent a house on Achill, a bigger island that is linked to the mainland by a causeway.

The couple say they thought the whole family was going to drown on some of the more frightening crossings.

“The power of the waves was terrifying. The only time we saw land was when we touched it,” Susan Calvey said with a shudder.

“Hope is diminishing. I am not happy. The children have to be away up to five days at a time in the winter when they cannot get home and they stay with their grandparents in Achill,” she said.

With a neatly tended flower garden, rows of vegetables, a freezer full of home-raised turkeys and a donkey that helps pull turf back from the bog lands for their peat fire, the Calveys have battled to be self-sufficient.

Tim Calvey said bitterly: “I think the government is quite prepared to let the island die. There is no industry here. Why put a link through to nothing?”

Inishbiggle islanders have lobbied Dublin to use European Community grants to build a cable car link that would give the island a new lease on life, act as a tourist attraction and perhaps attract small industry.

Community Group Secretary Paddy Henry said: “Ministers keep putting us on the long finger time and time again.”

Realistic about a vanishing way of life, he sat in his wind-swept cottage and admitted: “The island is dying. When a school goes, that is a signal. Mostly middle-aged people are left. The young are going away.”