Carlow gets new lease of life as commuter capital

While much of the Western world bangs on about downshifting, telecottaging, living above the shop and generally turning traditional work practices inside out to make time for Real Life, trends in the south-east suggest a startling shift in reverse.

Carlow is becoming a dormer county. Yes, that Carlow. That sleepy, midland outpost you fondly imagined to be light years from city cool in style and distance.

"Last Christmas we heard people saying that Carlow was `buzzing', and, to be honest, we laughed - I mean really laughed - at the idea," says 28-year-old Maeve O'Connell. She's not laughing now.

After months of haunting city suburbs and satellites in search of an affordable first home, she and her fiance, Geoffrey Gibbons, have put their money on Carlow.

For £70,000 (about half the cost of a three-bed semi in Dundrum), they've snapped up a second-hand, four-bedroom detached house outside the town.

Otherwise, the Cork-born couple will carry on as before. He will continue to work for Ericssons in Clonskeagh, she for South Dublin County Council in Tallaght. They know what lies ahead: 12-hour days with 7 a.m. starts and showers at the office.

This for a couple who currently rent an apartment smack in Dublin city centre. But one thing they know; they will have plenty of company on that early-morning commute.

Five years ago Carlow businesses closed for lunch, its main street was a sleepy throughway, and derelict mills lined the Barrow river. Now the second tranche of urban renewal is making itself felt.

People are moving back to live above the shop (reflected in a 4 per cent increase in the last census); the high streets are being prettified; every nook and cranny around the town is yielding to new housing; the derelict mills are giving way to smart apartments with a river view.

Traditional outlets such as Gillespie's hardware shop can rival the smartest interior stores in Dublin. Gillespie's also boasts a new art gallery. And there's a Superquinn, a Bewley's, a multiplex cinema and a slew of expensive restaurants, including Chinese and Indian. For maximum suburban authenticity, the town centre now also has horrendous traffic jams.

It's the Pale moving to Carlow. House completions doubled in the five years to 1997. According to a local estate agent, Charlie McDermott, some 60 per cent of his sales are to people from outside the county, and half of those are Dublin commuters.

In one new 74-house development, 65 per cent of the buyers are from Dublin or Kildare. He puts it down to the roads.

"Carlow is probably one of the most midland towns of all," he says. "It has just fallen into the web of a terrific road network. All the major routes lead into it." Roddy Kelly, chairman of the UDC, happily repeats the Carlow mantra, "Less than an hour to the airport" (since the opening of the M50), and reels off its myriad advantages for entrepreneurs casting around for accessibility teamed with a young, well-educated workforce streaming out of the IT. Meanwhile Joe Watters, the able and energetic Town Clerk, is frankly delighted with life. For him, the increasing numbers returning to live in the town centre offer "the most satisfying statistic" of all.

"It's up 4 per cent in the 1996 census. That's policy working," he says, while shepherding a huge visiting delegation from Dole, Carlow's French twin town. His aspirations are simple: an extension of the Arrow rail service to Carlow ("only another 25 minutes from Kildare town") and a performing arts venue in the town hall. So Carlow is a happening place. But could you, would you, pay the price for all this with the terrors of commuting? Maeve O'Connell and Geoffrey Gibbons can only grimace and guess at what lies ahead on dark winter mornings.

But 32-year-old Gail Scanlon has been there and survived. Unable to afford a house within the London commuter belt where she worked, she arrived in Carlow a few years ago with a husband (a social worker just employed by the health board), a baby and a desire to enhance her job prospects in the arts.

SHE landed a coveted place on UCD's arts administration course and only then did the Tyrone-born Northerner start to work out exactly where Belfield was. She spent the first few days investigating every possible permutation of a route to Dublin 4. "What I discovered was that it made no difference whatsoever. I tried leaving earlier and I tried leaving later. It made no difference. It took two hours each way every day. Sometimes it took 2 1/2 or three." But she stuck it out and is now on a short list of three for "the only job" she has ever "really, really wanted".

This will entail commuting to Dublin, but for a commuting veteran it holds no fears. The train will get her to Heuston Station in an hour and 10 minutes; the hoped-for job is within walking distance. And no, she has no plans to uproot herself, ever. Carlow is cosmopolitan enough for her. While breast-feeding, she joined a La Leche group and was astonished to find German and American women in the ranks.

For cultural purposes, she lists the wildly successful Little Theatre drama society, the Dolmen Musical Society, Carlow Choral Society and a plethora of congenial writers and artists who live locally.

From the house outside Carlow that the couple have built for themselves she has views that reach down to the Barrow and across 60 miles to four counties. Stephen Stewart, another Northerner and commuter, agrees, if a little more wearily. A history lecturer in the Mater Dei Institute in Drumcondra, his commute for many years has taken him on a morning train to Heuston, a bus to O'Connell Street and a No 3, 11 or 16 bus to the college. And all the way back again in the evening.

"There are some days in winter when I want nothing more than to settle down and sleep on a handy pavement . . . but I wouldn't change. I don't like the city. It's things like the noise, just how long it can take to cross the street, squealing sirens . . ." Two of his sons go to the local Gaelscoil, an option he knows probably wouldn't be available but for the growth and demand. And for all the trendy prettification, one thing he relishes: " it's still a country town".

And as he and Geraldine scout around for a larger house to contain their brood, the search continues in Carlow, albeit at the same frustrating pace as that endured by any of the incomers. An old, falling-down house they looked at last year for around £50,000 is now up for sale at twice that.

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Dick Grogan is on holiday. Readers who wish to leave messages for him can do so by dialling (01) 670-7711, extension 6298