Sinead Seoighe

This is what community is all about.

It's people and place that creates a Geopark.

We'll judge it in many ways by the type of visitor we're attracting in.

So tourism is a key strategy, but if tourism isn't managed correctly, tourists become more of a hindrance than a help to communities.

We're not trying to attract coaches passing through that don't contribute to the local economy.

We want people to come into Clonbur and whether it's staying at Petersburg or any of the other places, the local B&Bs, the local hotel, they're staying for periods of time.

They might be learning music, they might be learning the Irish language, they might be learning about geology or the environment.

We have an arborist programme that runs at Petersburg now and it attracts students from all over the country because it's the only programme of its type.

And that is bringing people in and the best part about, I call it educational tourism.

They're coming in not at the peak periods when we're full already.

They're coming in at the shoulder periods and in the winter.

So we're planning for the future.

It's important that we're speaking it.

There's more Irish being spoken in the community now over the last number of years.

If we can hold people in areas, then the language stays alive.

We're very proud that we're the only Gaeltacht and in fact UNESCO are really interested in this.

They looked for additional information in relation to the language.

because we probably don't see it ourselves, but internationally it's critical that languages are preserved.

You know, it's the whole history and heritage of people as well.

But it's all about people being able to live and work in places that keeps the language alive.