Last-minute funding has been made available to save an island from being cut off when Ireland’s only cable car service is closed for repairs, Sky News has learnt.

A replacement ferry service will now be put in place for Dursey Island in West Cork, which has been connected to the mainland by a cable car since 1969.

The car crosses 250 metres above the swirling Dursey Sound, which is notoriously difficult for boats to safely cross and dock.

The iconic cable car was often packed with sheep, or sometimes a cow, and a bottle of holy water and a prayer is attached to the wall for nervous passengers.

Battered by recent storms, the infrastructure is in need of repair, and the service will close on Thursday for at least nine months.

Despite months of wrangling, the two permanent residents and eight farmers that use the cable car on a daily basis faced the prospect of being stranded.

But Ireland’s Rural Development minister Heather Humphreys will announce that funding, understood to be in the region of €250,000 (£212,294) has now been made available to Cork County Council to procure a ferry service, to the relief of locals.

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Cattle farmer Joe Sullivan was born on Dursey Island but lives on the mainland, and commutes using the cable car to tend his animals.

He said it was a “fantastic day” for islanders, whose “entire way of life was on the cusp of being taken from us, it was shocking”.

Mr Sullivan welcomed the Irish government’s intervention but added that as the ferry operator had yet to be contracted that “the devil will be in the detail”.

“It will be fantastic”, he said.

“But is it going to be an everyday ferry or a seven-day-a-week ferry? I mean all those things will have to be ironed out, but at least a ferry will be coming, which is fantastic.”

Local councillor Danny Collins, who had led protests on behalf of locals said that “it seems to be good news, yes. I do welcome it, but we’ll have to work with the stakeholders, the people of Dursey to make sure a full ferry service is provided”.

The cable car is also a popular tourist attraction.

It is not only Ireland’s only cable car, it’s one of the few in Europe that crosses the ocean, at the very end of the south-westerly Beara Penninsula, a finger of land stretching into the Atlantic Ocean.

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