Any notion that the people of Cahirciveen should be grateful for the projected influx of some 50 new families when the Legal Aid Board moves there receives short shrift in the Kerry town.
"It's the people coming down who'll benefit more than we will," said Mr Jimmy Curran, one of the town's butchers and a stalwart of the town's development group, ACARD (A Cahirciveen Area Resource Development). "We know the benefits of the area."
These are obvious, even on a brief visit. Cahirciveen is an attractive and vibrant town in one of the most beautiful parts of Ireland, situated on an estuary overlooking Valentia island and with mountains to its rear.
Not surprisingly, it is a popular destination for tourists in the summer, with its ready access to beaches, lakes and mountains, its stunning scenery and, inevitably, a growing number of golf courses in the area. They obviously provide a market for the handful of good restaurants in and around the town, most of which are closed in November.
The town boasts a number of genuine - not reinvented - old-style pubs, and that ubiquitous symbol of modern living, the health food shop, was represented on the main street.
Those involved in the development of the town are quick to point to some of its more substantial assets. Its newly opened secondary school, attended by 750 pupils, was described by local auctioneer Mr Frank Curran as "state of the art", and from the outside is a most impressive building.
There are two national schools at the moment, dividing boys and girls, but a greenfield site is being sought to build a new, amalgamated school.
The town has a population of about 1,500, and is not entirely dependent on tourism for its economic life. The biggest employer is the Wilson sock factory, which employs about 250 people, some of them part-time. The Valentia Observatory, St Anne's geriatric hospital, agriculture and fish-processing also offer some employment. Although there is unemployment in the town, in general it has a vibrant, prosperous air, and much hard work has gone into improving its facilities.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the "interpretative centre", (why can't we just call them local museums?) that has just been opened in the old RIC barracks, a massive edifice with a commanding view of the whole area. This was derelict for years and was painstakingly rebuilt with the help of Fas and EU funds.
It now houses a great local museum, whose exhibits run from the local flora and fauna to a depiction of the lives of local "heroes" - cultural as well as political. Pride of place, of course, goes to Daniel O'Connell, who was born in Cahirciveen.
There are plenty of houses being built in the area, both to order and speculatively, and anyone who sells a house in Dublin and moves here will be able to buy another and have change left over, depending on where they buy. "A three- or four-bedroom house will be from £60,000 up," according to Mr Frank Curran. "What dictates the price is the location. It could be £200,000 for a fabulous sea view."
A site would vary from £15,000 to £40,000, again depending on location and views. Local builders charge about £50 a square foot, he said, so a house of 1,200 sq. ft would cost £60,000 to build. Sites usually include enough land for a substantial garden.
Mr Frank Curran admitted that there was a need for more leisure facilities in the town but said these were planned. There are GAA and soccer clubs, and music in the pubs at weekends, but no cinema. "We would hope to have at least one four- or five-star hotel with a leisure centre by the time the people from Dublin come down," he said.
So Cahirciveen would be a pleasant place to live, especially for families with young children - provided they did not want to go anywhere else.
It is a long way, not only from Dublin but from any large population centre. The two largest towns in Kerry, Tralee and Killarney, are more than an hour's drive away on narrow, twisting roads - even if the drive is made pleasant by the scenery. A bus leaves the town every day at about 8.30 a.m. and connects with the midday train from Killarney to Dublin, which arrives that evening. It would be quicker to get to New York.
It is a lot faster to travel by plane from Farranfore airport, about 40 miles away on a twisting road, with no signposts for the airport. Aer Lingus has two flights a day to and from Dublin, but there is no public transport out of Farranfore. "If you were depending on public transport, you would be lost," said Mr Curran.
"At the end of the day there is a balance between communications on the one hand and location and quality of life on the other," he said. The fact that there are long lists of civil servants wishing to transfer out of Dublin shows that some, at least, have weighed up that balance and made their decision.