Fifty-two miles from Dublin and already well-established as a commuter base, Portlaoise is a town which has pulled its socks up in recent years. So much so that it is unrecognisable as the somewhat dreary midlands town on the Cork/Limerick road. Large numbers of first-time buyers moving out from the city have helped to revitalise the town which has benefitted from being bypassed. The social life is good and the remodelled Main Street area would put Temple Bar in the shade.
Cheaper housing is the most obvious attraction for newcomers. Also Portlaoise's central position on the country's road network. The town is an hour's drive from the M50, two hours from Cork and Gorey and one-and-a-half hours from Limerick and Rosslare. Small wonder sales reps are well-represented among the numbers of young house buyers relocating here.
For your money in Portlaoise you can buy an ex-council house for around £60,000, modern three-bedroom semis start at £95,000 and large four-bedroom detached houses are selling for £140,000. Half acre sites with planning permission can be bought from £40,000. Tempting.
It's a long daily commute to the city. There are roadworks just outside the town on the Dublin Road. Monasterevin and Kildare are frustrating bottleknecks and from Naas to the quays can be slow. Motorists travelling the very poor stretch between Monasterevin and Kildare could be forgiven for thinking they had turned off the main road onto a boreen.
The signposting from Dublin to Portlaoise also leaves much to be desired. Anyone travelling down from the city should ignore the "Alternative Route" signs and continue down the N7 through Kildare and Monasterevin, as the secondary route involves hold-ups at roadworks and a slow crawl through Athy. The journey should take one and a half hours from O'Connell Street.
A draft plan for the area is "awaiting new regulations" according to County Secretary Louis Brennan. A motorway is planned for Portlaoise to Dublin, 3,000 new houses have been given the go-ahead and a new £15 million main drainage scheme will pave the way for even more housing stock. Construction will start next year, subject to approval on a £6 million public sports and leisure complex on the site of the existing swimming pool in the heart of the town. Another privately-built four-star hotel and leisure facility with a multi-screen cinema and car park is to be built by local developer Tom Keane at the top of Main Street.
It's worth the trip down the N7 just to see how far Ireland's county towns have improved since bypasses were introduced. The long narrow Main Street in Portlaoise is now cobbled and shopfronts are traditional in style. Smart coffee shops and boutiques trade in even narrower alleyways with names like Bull Lane and Peppers Court. The soft landscape surrounding the town is another plus, with the Slieve Bloom mountains on the doorstep and fine old country houses to visit.
The Dunamaise Theatre on the site of the original old jail stages everything from traditional and new drama to the Christmas panto. Later this month Ballet Ireland will be paying a visit and Frances Black is coming in November. Don't miss Kevin Byrne's hauntingly beautiful photographs of Laois currently showing in the upstairs gallery. The thick steel-reinforced back wall of the prison is still there and there's a new cyber cafe under the staircase where the cells used to be.
"People are finding their spirits lifted in a place where there was sadness long ago," says lighting designer Nick Anton of the new theatre, which is already attracting audiences from as far as Dublin and Kilkenny. A Scotsman who has made Portlaoise his home, Nick and his wife Aoife have just paid £43,000 for a cottage on half an acre three miles outside town. Most people know Portlaoise as the location of the detention centre for political prisoners and this has coloured perceptions of the town. The prison is a major source of employment and the spin-off for local businesses is welcome. The new Midlands Prison, which is expected to open towards the end of the year, will have a different status, dealing with more general offenders. Most jobs in the town are in Government or semi-state companies, making Portlaoise relatively recession-proof.
Private industry has been slow to move in, blamed by some on the lack of a Government minister from the town. An announcement is due soon on a major anchor tenant for the IDA's new industrial estate and this should persuade others to follow, according to the local Chamber of Commerce. Rental potential is good - it might make sense for a first-time buyer to buy here and rent their property, hoping to gain some equity over a period of time.
Where to buy? At the cheapest end of the scale, three-bedroom ex-council houses are on the market at an almost unbelievably low price compared to Dublin. P J Hume & Son is selling a three-bedroom mid-terrace house at St Brigid's Place, close to the rail station, for excess of £60,000. The same agent has a four-bedroom dormer bungalow, also near the station, for £97,000-plus.
New estates are in abundance, some with forward-thinking concepts of which Dublin developers could take note. Kilminchy on the Dublin Road is one such scheme. The site incorporates a nursing home, tennis court and bowling alley and a couple of man-made lakes. Three-bedroom detached houses start at £135,000, through joint agents Sherry FitzGerald Moran, Andrew Nolan of Kilcullen and Coonan's of Naas.
Lower-priced semis are the big draw for first-time buyers in the Mountmellick Road area. Here, around £70,000 will buy a 10 to 20 year-old house on Knockmay estate, while a three-bed detached bungalow can be bought for about £100,000. More expensive estates are off the Dublin, Abbeyleix and Stradbally Roads. Detached bungalows in these areas sell for £140,000 and four-bedroom semis are around £135,000.
Quaint country cottages on an acre or so come on the market occasionally and, at around £50,000 needing gutting, are worth trawling for. Right in the town, a seven-bedroom period rectory on the Mountmellick Road, in need of some updating, is for sale for £300,000 with Sherry FitzGerald Moran.
There is a good scattering of Dublin registered cars on most of the newer housing estates, all making the daily trip to the city. Nurse Caroline Connolly leaves home at 6 a.m. and doesn't get back until about 10 o'clock in the evening. The journey takes an hour and a half at these off-peak times. She drives, rather than taking the train because of the added difficulty getting from Heuston Station to work in Templeogue.
She finds the road traffic-free as far as Kildare and from Johnstown on is always slow. Discovering the back road from Monasterevin and through Rathangan which bypasses Kildare town has reduced the journey time. She had to replace her car with a new model - an unexpected expense on top of the mortgage on her new £110,000 house.
Driving is second-nature to area sales manager Mary Emerson. "I lived in north County Dublin before I married and some days we'd spend an hour-and-a-half going twenty miles. At least on this journey you are moving all the way to Newlands Cross." Far from the nightmare she had been warned about, Mary finds Portlaoise "fabulous to socialise in and the weekends make up for the daily slog."
