The island is once more on the international property market at offers over 2 million. Maruma promised 15 million of investment for the island together with secure tenancy agreements for the many people living in accommodation rented from the landowner. He failed to honour either agreement and lost interest in Eigg. His agents put the island on the market and the islanders, fed up with having their future dependent on the whim of absentee owners, finally agreed to launch a bid to purchase it themselves in partnership with the local government authority and a national conservation group, the Scottish Wildlife Trust. As I write two offers have been received by Maruma but he has turned them both down.
Uncertainty remains about the island's future.
The events on Eigg are helping to re-ignite the debate about land tenure and landownership in Scotland. It is an issue which has been in the background of many debates about how land is used and developed but which is now being treated more seriously as an important issue in its own right. Scottish landownership is characterised by three important features. Scottish land law is still technically feudal. The pattern of private landownership is the most concentrated in Europe.