THERE is already a lengthy waiting list for 35 new static mobile homes being built in the village of Eyeries as people face a housing shortage.

Cork County Council has granted local businessman Colman O’Sullivan planning permission for the development, and site works have already commenced.

The Eyeries native told The Southern Star that he hopes his latest project, which involves a personal investment of €750,000, at the south-eastern side of the village will be operational by March 1 of next year.

The development is considered to be another major boost following the opening by Colman and his wife Hannah of a café, a motor home park with 15 hard stands, and 13 new house builds – six of which were social housing and seven were private – at The Oval in recent years.

A wholesale firm has agreed to sell the mobile homes for the development and Colman will place them on the new fully-serviced hard stands at the Eyeries Holiday Park.

Colman explained the appeal of the project saying: “It will be open all year, and will not close for five months in winter.”

For an arbitrary sum of €50,000, a person could purchase a modern mobile home, large enough for a family, instead of taking out a huge mortgage in order to get on the property ladder.

Previously, Colman ran a pub with his good friend the late Cllr Patrick Gerard Murphy in Cork for a while, as well as a pub and night club in Castletownbere for about 20 years.

Colman’s wife Hannah is also kept busy running a very popular Irish dance school called Scoil Rince Carney that travels nationally, and internationally.

Before settling down in Eyeries, Colman worked as a diver, at a local salmon farm, worked in New York for a time, and for a time he worked in construction in Cork.

He has put his skills to good use and now Eyeries, with its school, church, post office, shops, pubs and cafés, together with its colourful and much-photographed streetscapes, has much to recommend it to families looking for a new start in life.

But there is one more surprise in store because the Eyeries Holiday Park is to have a major new gym.

It will be open six days a week and will be another asset for the village, and indeed anyone on the Beara Peninsula, including sports clubs, who would like to use it for health and leisure purposes.

Given that the lack of infrastructure has held up many proposed developments in West Cork, Colman confirmed that the park will not be reliant on Uisce Éireann, having already invested €70,000 in securing his own water supply.

He also confirmed that the sum of €250,000 was invested in providing the site’s own water treatment plant, and that the overall investment by him and his wife is €750,000.