Rather than returning to the city, many of those who lived in the commuter belt in 2003 have been joined by their extended families, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
The sky did not fall in. The commuter towns we explored seven years ago did not explode and die. Blue-jerseyed Dubs failed to storm the capital after a second nuclear winter in Rochfortbridge.
It failed to happen because the view that miserable first-time buyers were being forced from their sophisticated native city into injun territory was always too simplistic. There was nothing homogenous about them, for a start. Sure, some talked gleefully of selling up in Drimnagh, Clondalkin or Walkinstown for fabulous money, getting a house twice the size for buttons 75km down the road and lashing the remainder on a good car.
But privately, in countless cases, there were deeper motives, never articulated for fear of upsetting good former neighbours: worries about children being enmeshed in antisocial gangs, a woman too frightened to walk to the shops, an inner-city school so deprived even teachers were bailing out.
Many of those who landed in Ratoath, then the fastest-growing commuter centre in Leinster, were ready-formed families trading up. Rochfortbridge was alive with Dubs in love with their spacious houses, big gardens, safe neighbourhoods and good local schools.
In Carlow and Gorey middle- class couples who missed Dublin’s variety and cosmopolitanism firmly believed they were giving their children a “country” ethos and freedom to roam.
The vast majority of those we interviewed in 2003 are still there. A cynic might suggest that of course they are; who can sell a house in Rochfortbridge or Carlow now? But how to explain, then, the startling number of parents and siblings who joined those pioneers? Or the offspring who failed to flee to Dublin as soon as they came of age? A couple who fled north Dublin eight years ago now have parents, siblings and offspring – 21 in total – living all around them in Rochfortbridge.
Some are mortgage-free, which suggests free choice. The teenage daughter of a Walkinstown family, who hadn’t quite taken to it when we talked seven years ago, has since married another Dub blow-in and settled in a house only metres from her parents’ home. Her brother has also bought in.
There were casualties, of course. The man who despaired that “in Dublin, house prices are unaffordable, but here is inaccessible” abandoned Gorey a year later for a dormitory town nearer Dublin. The exhausted cries of the baby being hauled out of bed at dawn to be loaded into the car were finally intolerable, and the long-promised commuter train and bypass were nowhere in sight. There was the inner-city girl, now 20, who moved to Carlow at 12 but couldn’t be kept out of Dublin. “She’s just a city kid,” sighs her mother now, as the daughter kicks up her heels in London.
Seven years ago, for an outsider, it was sometimes hard to see an upside. Freedom to roam was not the first phrase that came to mind in the little village of Ratoath, with its rampaging development, negligible amenities, lack of footpaths, poor lighting and thunderous traffic. Neither Rochfortbridge nor Portlaoise had a playground. The lack of a commuter train in exploding Gorey was inexplicable. Water and sewerage capacity was inadequate even at that stage. And for all the talk of great “country” schools, it was clear that no one on high was doing the sums.
In 2010 water supply remains a talking point in Rochfortbridge, where it arrives unreliably, through asbestos piping, and the town still awaits its playground. Ironically, the delay in upgrading sewerage capacity saved places such as Gorey and Rochfortbridge from further developer madness.
AGAINST ALL THE odds, these places have come a long way. Most have magnificent new arts and community centres, fine new schools and booming sports clubs. Transport links have improved hugely. In seven years Ratoath has created an entire new infrastructure.
If there are heroes in this story, they are the community activists, boards of management, parish priests and even some councillors and officials who consulted, raised funds, compiled reports, attended meetings and relentlessly badgered those in authority to live up to their responsibilities.
John Scott, a Glaswegian project engineer who arrived in Ratoath 10 years ago with his wife and two young children, remains astonished at the amount of lobbying required to get a basic essential, such as a school. “The Government tries to delegate responsibility but not authority,” he says.
By contrast, the number of creches, thin on the ground seven years ago, has reached saturation point, says Sonya Duggan of the Kilminchy creche in Portlaoise, and there is no longer a level playing pitch between trained professionals and home-based child-carers. Numbers of children in creches are falling because of job losses and couples finding their own way through the thorny thicket of work-life balance.
In 2003 this was a major source of angst, but even then surveys showed that families with two full-time working parents were not as common as was generally believed. Rochfortbridge and Rathoath had as many stay-at-home mothers as commuters, and quite a few had landed local jobs with child-friendly hours. Nonetheless, many mothers were marooned at home with largely absent fathers.
In Rochfortbridge, at Niamh Gallagher’s Little Rascals creche, the number of children in her charge full time has fallen dramatically since 2003; just five out of 60 now, and in general they arrive later. Sonya Duggan reckons that her full-time numbers are down by half. Many are in for three days a week – “a combination of fathers losing their jobs and parents working out a better work-life balance”.
The difference now is that many fathers are striving for that balance. Some have increased their days working from home as technology improves and managers learn to trust remote workers. Conor McAllister, who lives in Ratoath but runs the Grafton Barber on Grafton Street in Dublin, uses CCTV to monitor the business from home.
Commuting frustrations have also eased. Through the boom years the crisis points were predictable, says Dr Gerald White, a Portlaoise GP, recalling how “the wheels came off” for many commuting parents when someone fell ill. “The exhaustion factor kicked in, and they would come looking for a physical cause.” With the arrival of better roads and public transport, he is seeing a distinct improvement. “Most would tell you the road journey is much simpler. The train service is much improved . . . but now, of course, there are new and different worries. One or both are losing jobs. There’s a lot more pressure.”
Fr Gerry Stuart, Ratoath’s parish priest, who is seeing the new primary schools finally swimming into focus, likes to think that the recession is “a way for the soul to catch up with the body”. It’s as good an analogy as any for what happened to the commuter counties in boom-town Ireland.
