We are transition year students in Killarney Community College and we feel strongly about the following issue:

The Annals of Inisfallen  are a chronicle of the medieval history of Ireland. There are more than 2,500 entries spanning the years between 433 and 1450. The manuscript is thought to have been compiled in 1092, as the chronicle is written by a single scribe down to that point but updated by many different hands thereafter. It was written by the monks of Innisfallen Abbey, on Innisfallen Island on Lough Leane, near Killarney in Munster, but made use of sources produced at different centres around Munster as well as a Clonmacnoise group text of the hypothetical Chronicle of Ireland.

This is an incredibly important primary source of medieval Irish History, surely as important as our Book of Kells on display in Trinity College Dublin.

The Annals of Inisfallen came into private ownership after the dissolution of the monasteries.

They were acquired together with the island of Inisfallen by local landlords, the Brownes, and afterwards by manuscript collectors. They were acquired by the Bodleian Library Oxford in the mid 18th century and have remained there apart from a brief loaned return to Killarney in the 1980s and 2005.

Not only would the Annals of Inisfallen be an important historical source for students to study but would provide a source of tourist revenue for our town and county.This is an Irish artefact and belongs in Ireland.