NEW LIFE:Liz Doyle decided she 'wasn't doing this anymore' and went to live on an island
LIZ DOYLE was sitting at her desk, the nucleus of her 60-hour-a-week job, when she had her "epiphany moment". And it was a brief moment, she says, although it lasted most of that particular day.
"My mum, Ann Curry, was visiting and I remember driving home and saying to her 'I'm not doing this anymore'," Doyle recalls.
"This" was juggling her post as senior manager in a British charity with rearing two small children on her own in Birmingham. Originally from Dalkey in Dublin, she had been brought up in England, had returned to Ireland with her family as a teenager, and had then moved back across the water after college.
"I got married, but then divorced when the kids were very young. So I had to work outside the home, but also wanted to as well," she says. She had secured teaching qualifications and a diploma in social work after graduating from UCD.
"There I was, working to keep everything going, enjoying the job but barely seeing my children," she says.
Her daughter, Teresa, had already started at school and her younger child, Luke, was due to enrol when she began thinking of alternatives. "I would talk about it, as you do, but it was only after that particular day that I decided to act. I drew up a list of what I wanted, as in a slower pace of life, a house near the sea and a community in which to bring up my children, without being too isolated.
"Obviously, I preferred to be mortgage-free, so I began searching for houses under a certain price on a property website. This house came up . . . on Arranmore Island, Co Donegal!
"It seemed a bit too good to be true, so my mum came with me for a weekend visit to the island. I put an offer on the house and enrolled the kids in the local school, and moved there with the kids last August.
"I am a sensible person, I like to consider things, but the house felt just right," she says.
"I have neighbours either side of me, similar to where we were in England, I have a shop up the road which is closer to me than where we were, and there are very frequent ferries to and from Burtonport," she says.
"Yes, of course, it was a big step, particularly as a single parent - but I also gave a lot of thought to the worst that could happen. If we didn't settle, if things went a bit pear-shaped, we would still have a lovely holiday house. People who I didn't know at all, and who didn't know me, had already made us feel so welcome."
Although island life can be costly in some respects, due to the expense of transporting food, goods and materials, she found that she began to spend a lot less. "I am a great fritterer of money. I used to find myself going into town and spending €10 on a top in Penneys, then buying a latte and then a magazine. Now I do one big shop."
She knew she would need an income, and has begun working part-time. "I commute! But instead of driving down the Birmingham motorway and getting stuck at junction 10 on the M52, I now take the fast ferry from the island on a Monday and Friday morning, I drive by Glenveagh national park in towards Letterkenny, and tutor children with autism."
Ferries are very regular, but weather is always a factor during the winter. "The ferry was cancelled one recent Monday, but I rang the family I was due to see and rescheduled for Tuesday. So there is that flexibility. I have a lovely girl who picks up the kids from school.
"There is a lot of newness - in many ways it is like moving to another country - but I am just surprised that more people don't do this," she says. Her children are thriving in a two-teacher national school and have adjusted quickly to learning through the Irish language.
Arranmore's population is 522, representing a 4 per cent drop since the 2002 census, according to Majella Ní Chríocháin of Comdháíl Oileáín na hÉireann, the Irish Islands Federation.
While the entire island population off the Irish coast has fallen almost continuously since 1956, the rate of decline has slowed in the past decade, she notes, and attributes this to the increased investment in infrastructure and subsidisation of ferries by Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív.
"People have been very open and accepting and very helpful, and in that sense I feel much less isolated here than in Birmingham," Doyle points out. "The kids have been invited to parties, and the support I get is terrific. It is a bit like having a man without the hassle!
"Life always has its ups and downs - the heating has gone today as I am talking to you, but I know I will get help sorting that. I would have been high and dry for days back in England.
"Yes, I am a city girl and I sometimes yearn for things," she says, recalling the Starbucks soya latte and blueberry muffin she mentioned in a recent contribution to Saol na n-Oileán, the island federation's quarterly journal. "However, I got my first pay cheque from my new job recently, and I bought myself a coffee-maker . . . Starbucks at home!!
• Information on moving to the islands is available from the Irish Islands' Federation at its Inis Oírr office, tel (099)75096, or website www.oileain
