The flight from the land and the villages of the south-west has accelerated, writes Anne Lucey
The hilltop village of Knocknagoshel, high on the Kerry-Limerick border, has just one shop.
There were 14 in the 1940s, recalled Eddie Walsh (88), winner of five All-Ireland football medals and owner of a bar in the village. There were four until recently.
With the closure of others recently on the main N21 road, Moira McAuliffe's The Family Shop on the main street above Parnell Square is the only one between Abbeyfeale in Co Limerick some 8km away and Castleisland 15km to the south.
Villages in west Limerick and north Kerry are losing their population, as farming is not what it was and communities age.
The 2002 population of Knocknagashel is 719, down from 754 in 1996. Even since the last census, the flight from the land and from the villages in west Limerick has accelerated.
Nearby Mountcollins on the Limerick side can no longer field a full under-16 football team. It won the Limerick county final five years ago, and pupil numbers at the local school there have halved. Two shops remain where once there were seven.
What Knocknagoshel needed now was "another Dan Paddy Andy. It could do with more young couples," Mr Walsh said, alluding to the famous Kerry matchmaker.
At the 11 a.m. break the shouting and play of the village children in the schoolyard floods in through the door of The Family Shop. A shiny tractor, its registration 79 KY, is king of the main street, briefly.
The shop is the focal point of the community. The glowing open fire has two welcoming armchairs for the talkative and the lingering.
On the fireplace is a framed print of Padre Pio with a lighted candle. Moira is determined her shop will remain unaligned, not taken over by Spar or Centra or such.
"I wouldn't join anything," she said. This is despite the bus which takes shoppers to the new Lidl in Castleisland once a week.
Moira's premises are doing well. In the last three weeks she has taken on a part-time worker.
In the past four years 10 English families have arrived in the area. Eight of their children now attend the 83-pupil school, a huge boost. Old houses have been occupied again.
"It is very upsetting to see the shops closing," Mr Patrick Brosnan remarked in Eddie Walsh' s bar.
Shopping is still a part of living in Knocknagoshel. He had done his after collecting his pension at the Post Office.