Ireland has hundreds of offshore islands and the guidebooks cover about six of them. The rest fall into rough categories: granite Gaeltacht islands you can drive to over a causeway, monastic rocks three kilometres out where landing is a rare privilege, seabird colonies that run to tens of thousands of pairs and that you watch from a boat because walking ashore would crush the burrows, and abandoned townlands where the last family left within living memory. The honest truth up front: of the six below, only two let the general public set foot on them. The others you see from the water, and on the wrong day you don’t see them at all. Here they are, ranked roughly by how easily you can actually get to one.
1. Saltee Islands, County Wexford
The two pink-granite Saltees lie about 5 km off County Wexford, opposite the fishing village of Kilmore Quay, and they are the one rock on this list where a day visitor can step ashore on a scheduled boat and walk among the birds. More than 220 species have been recorded, and from April to July the south-west cliffs of Great Saltee carry colonies of puffins, gannets, razorbills and guillemots dense enough that the noise reaches you before the smell does. Up to 120 grey seals haul out in the bays in autumn to pup. The name is Old Norse, saltey, the salt islands, after the spray that coats the cliffs in a winter gale.
The Neale family have owned Great Saltee since 1943 and run it as a sanctuary; Michael Neale crowned himself ‘Prince Michael of the Saltees’, and the one-hour cliff loop passes the throne and stone obelisk his descendants still keep. Little Saltee stays closed. Two things to plan around. The ferry from Kilmore Quay runs April to September and carries 24 passengers a boat, so summer weekends sell out weeks ahead and you must book online. And there is nothing on the island – no toilet, no café, no bin – so use the harbour facilities first, pack a picnic, and carry your litter back off. Read more about the Saltee Islands. If you only do one island on this page, make it this one, and aim for a morning sailing when the light is still on the cliffs.
2. Gorumna Island, County Galway
You can drive to Gorumna without boarding anything. Gorumna (Oileán Gharmna) sits at the core of the South Connemara Gaeltacht in County Galway, tied to the mainland by a chain of bridges and causeways through Lettermore, the handsome Carrickalegaun Bridge among them. Roughly three-quarters of its thousand-odd residents speak Irish daily, outside the classroom, and this is the gentlest place on the list: a living-language island rather than a wildlife one. People have farmed here for more than 4,000 years, and the Famine halved the population in a decade, from nearly 1,900 in 1841 to just over 1,000 by 1851.
This is the birthplace of the lament An Trá Bhán, written in the 1860s by Bríd Ní Mháille after her three brothers drowned, first performed in South Boston and still sung in céilí houses here. The free Lettermullen and Gorumna Heritage Centre fills a restored 1898 schoolhouse and 1905 post office and runs music sessions and language workshops, which is the surest way to hear Irish spoken naturally. For a walk, the 8 km Gorumna Loop threads blanket bog and granite past the medieval church ruins at Trawbaun Graveyard, with Greatman’s Bay and the Aran Islands across the water. A half-day covers it: start at the heritage centre to get your bearings, and wear boots for the boggy stretches.
3. Haulbowline Island, County Cork
Haulbowline (Inis Sionnach, island of the foxes) is a different kind of island again – half active naval base, half public park, sitting in Cork Harbour opposite Cobh and reached by a 1966 road bridge from Ringaskiddy. The world’s first yacht club, the Cork Water Club, was founded here in 1720. Between 1807 and 1824 the Royal Navy and Board of Ordnance raised an Ordnance Yard, a Martello tower and a run of great stone storehouses, many still standing. In the First World War the dockyard employed up to 4,000 people as an Allied re-supply hub, and in June 1940 a motor torpedo boat launched from here made two trips to help in the Dunkirk evacuation.
The western half is the headquarters of the Irish Naval Service and closed to the public; you cannot cross the security barriers, and the historic buildings are photographed from the footpaths, not toured. The eastern half tells a harder story. It was the Irish Steel works from 1939, and the clean-up of chromium-6 and slag cost over €60 million before the 22-acre amenity park opened in 2021. The walking trails are level and properly accessible, with open views across the harbour to Cobh, which is the best reason for most people to come. For the clearest shot of the 19th-century storehouses, walk the waterfront early before the light flattens, and bring binoculars for the harbour traffic.
4. Puffin Island, County Kerry
Puffin Island (Oileán na gCánóg, the island of the puffins) rises sharply from the Atlantic less than 300 metres off the Iveragh Peninsula near Portmagee, and it holds far more birds than its size suggests. Between 5,000 and 10,000 pairs of puffins burrow into the grassy slopes each summer, arriving in late March and gone by early August. The bigger story underground is the Manx shearwater: an estimated 20,000 pairs nest in burrows across the gentler summits, spending the day at sea and coming in at dusk in loud rafts. The island also gave RTÉjr its animated series Puffin Rock, narrated by Chris O’Dowd, if you have younger children to win over.
You cannot land. BirdWatch Ireland manages the island and grants access only to researchers, because a walker’s footstep collapses the burrow systems the shearwaters and storm-petrels depend on. The way to see it is from the water, on licensed boat tours out of Portmagee through the breeding season, or by sea kayak through Puffin Sound past Lemontougher Rock. Bring binoculars; without them the cliffs are just cliffs. May and June are the busiest weeks, when chicks are being fed, and a morning departure gives you the softest light and the calmest channel.
5. Inishvickillane, County Kerry
Inishvickillane (Inis Mhic Aoibhleáin) sits at the far western edge of the Blasket Islands, off the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, and was long called the last parish before America. It is best known as the private retreat of Taoiseach Charles Haughey, who bought it in 1974 and released a herd of red deer here in 1980; declassified State Papers show the Naval Service and Air Corps kept a standing plan to pluck a sitting head of government off it when government business demanded. Underneath the modern story is a much older one: an early monastic site with a dry-stone oratory, a graveyard and a holy well dedicated to St Brendan, and once a famous Ogham stone now held at Trinity College Dublin.
The Ó Dálaigh family were the last residents, leaving about 70 years ago; their stone cabin with its lattice windows still stands alone on the slope, and their descendants cross each summer to graze sheep. In the breeding season, May to early July, the western promontories hold fulmars, storm-petrels and Atlantic puffins, and grey seals work the surrounding waters. The catch is the access: there is no ferry. You come by chartered boat from Dún Chaoin, occasionally from Valentia, and only when the sea allows, which around the Blaskets is far from guaranteed. Confirm the boat the night before – it is the difference between a crossing and a wasted drive to the pier.
6. High Island, County Galway
High Island holds the earliest surviving monastic watermill in Ireland, and the earliest of its type known anywhere in Europe – a working horizontal mill built by monks on a cliff-ringed rock three kilometres out into the Atlantic off Claddaghduff, in County Galway. St Féichin’s community settled the 80-acre island in the 7th century and left a chapel, beehive cells, more than fifty cross-slabs and an enclosure wall in a sheltered southern valley beside one of two freshwater lakes. The place had a reputation for sanctity well beyond its size: St Gormgal, who died here in 1017, was held in such regard that Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, is said to have rowed out to make his confession to him.
I have put High Island last for a reason: you probably won’t land on it. There is no pier and no ferry, only two narrow eastern coves usable in calm seas, and even a moderate swell rules them out, so most people who know the island have only ever seen it from a boat. That is still a worthwhile trip on a settled day, for the cliffs and the lakes alone. Access is by private charter from Claddaghduff or the Aughrus Peninsula near Clifden; go with someone who knows the landing, because a flooded copper-mine shaft from around 1820 makes unaccompanied wandering a poor idea. The monastery is a State-owned national monument even though the island is privately held, so the ruins stay public where the grazing does not. Barnacle geese winter here, fulmars and Arctic terns nest, and peregrines breed each spring.
Before you go
These islands run on the weather, not the timetable. Ferries and charters are seasonal, broadly spring to early autumn, and even in season a moderate swell cancels a crossing at short notice, so confirm your boat the night before and take the earliest sailing when the sea is calmest. Most have no facilities of any kind: bring food, water, waterproofs and proper footwear, and carry out everything you carry in. Keep well back from nesting sites in the breeding season, never land where landing is prohibited, and leave the drone in the car – a sudden noise overhead can send a whole colony off its burrows. The single most useful habit is the dull one: ring the operator the evening before and ask straight out whether tomorrow is a runner.
