A lucky couple have been paid to move to a stunning uninhabited island – but the move comes with conditions.

Every year thousands of people apply to be caretakers of Great Blasket Island, a beautiful Atlantic island off Dunquin, near Dingle, the Republic of Ireland, which has been uninhabited since 1953.

The hunt for two people to take charge of the shop and the island’s overnight accommodation during the tourist season is massively oversubscribed.

This year Aisling Costello and her partner Conor Jones, from Kilkenny, Island, are the caretakers of Great Blasket Island,.

The couple’s duties will include overseeing three holiday cottages, cleaning and painting, looking after overnight guests, and serving tea and coffee. On top of this, they will need to stay on top of the “day-to-day runnings” of the island.

But there are two rather big catches – there is little electricity and no hot water.

Despite the absence of permanent residents, the caretakers will be kept busy as the job advert made a point of highlighting the “intense” nature of the role.

Aisling and Conor have already moved to Great Blasket and are likely to stay until the tourist season finishes, which could be mid-October depending on the weather.

Aisling said her friends think they are “mad” but is looking forward to the challenge.

She told Kilkenny Live: “I’ve known about the job for a couple of year from just seeing it online, and I immediately wanted to do it. I think some people think it’s a completely mad thing to want to do, but I knew immediately, that’s just what I would love to do.

“There’s some people that you would tell and they just ask why… they can’t fathom why you would actually want to do something like that.We just wanted to experience as much as we can. Everything is a win if the goal is experience.”

Aisling says that she and her partner were on holiday in the Spanish city of San Sebastián when they found out their application had been successful.

She assumed it was going to be a rejected email given the volume of people who apply for the roles, and joked that they walked around San Sebastián in a daze for two days after receiving the incredible news.

The caretakers of Great Blasket have three holiday cottages to manage and the island’s co-owner, Billy O’Connor, will bring supplies by boat on a regular basis.

Records show that in the middle of the 19th century there were around 175 people living on the island. The population began to dwindle and by 1953, when it had dropped to 22, the decision was taken to permanently relocate them to the mainland.

There were a number of reasons for this, including the extreme Atlantic weather, severe isolation and the lack of basic services like a school or doctor.