`Boredom, heat, arguing, shredded nerves . . . does this sound like your usual summer when school finishes?" asks Paula O'Regan. The answer, she says, is to send the children to an island in the sun. Paula runs Ireland's only offshore adventure centre with her colleague, Samantha Rudd.
Ms O'Regan is a native Clear Islander, and Ms Rudd, from Britain, has lived on the island since 1993. Both graduates of the University of Wales, between them they have amassed more than 30 years of experience in facilitating and coaching outdoor adventure groups.
Their company is known as Cleire Lasmuigh - Cape Outdoors - and since June 1997, it has been offering island adventure holidays on a non-residential basis to visitors and school groups.
Now they have moved into the Youth Hostel on Clear Island's South Harbour. It means that the adventure centre can provide accommodation for 40 people and supervised residential weeks for 11-to-15-yearolds.
Parents may find the island a perfect solution to the looming long summer school break. Clear, of course, is the only Gaeltacht island in Munster.
It enjoys more than average sunshine and is an ideal location for walking, sea kayaking, snorkelling, hill-walking, archery, power kiting, and team challenges. If that lot doesn't exhaust them, nothing will.
And when they return home, the rigours of it all, not to mention the enjoyment, will lead no doubt to tidy rooms, perfect manners and a new-found appreciation of just how good their parents have been all along.
Clear Island, says Paula O'Regan, operates at a different pace to the rest of the world and is just the place to give parents some rest and relaxation from bored offspring who can't quite figure out what to do with themselves.
Every day, there are at least seven hours of activities, an endof-the-day review of what has gone on, and for those who achieve the required standards, certification from national bodies like the Irish Canoe Union and the Irish Underwater Council.
Qualified and experienced instructors are in charge of all outside activities, and in the evenings, the young adventurers will be able to attend ceilis at which visiting Irish language students like to have the craic and hone their skills in the first official language. It's almost too healthy and wholesome for words.
Places are limited to groups of eight and the cost of the week is less than £35-a-day. The centre has already captured the imagination of school groups throughout Co Cork.
The youngsters love the idea of the 45-minute ferry trip from Baltimore to the island and of the splendid isolation of the place.
The camaraderie that develops as the courses progress is no drawback either. If you want to get Jack and Jill out of your hair for a few days this summer, a telephone call to 028-39198 would be in order.