In the last of the series,
KATHY SHERIDANrevisits Gorey, where progress has been steady but residents are still battling the commute and schools are a concern for parents
ON A sunny Saturday morning, a bunch of 30-somethings gather in the garden of a fine house in Woodlands Manor. They’ve seen better times; two are out of work. But they’re a cheerful lot and snort with laughter when someone recalls the slogan that launched their estate: “Where dreams come true”. All eyes take in the ugly hoarding a few yards away, not quite concealing the footings for “ghost” houses; the derelict old house that is a magnet for nefarious activities; the unfinished entrance road with the protruding manhole covers and the unsightly wasteland alongside.
Less than a quarter of a planned 300 houses were built, leaving 80 families marooned in a no-man’s land. “The planning process runs totally against residents because it’s open-ended,” says Cllr Malcolm Byrne.
Ironically, the thwarted ambition dragging down Woodlands Manor is good news for Gorey town. Poor sewerage capacity meant the town was saved from the “madness” of further development, says Byrne.
The Woodlands Manor five – Linda and Brian Kelly, Tamsin O’Neill, Mark Harrop and Alan Cullen – explain how they hunted in vain for affordable homes in Co Wicklow or couldn’t get planning permission to build. It wasn’t uncommon to see a €150,000 difference between identical houses in Newtownmountkennedy and Gorey.
When Tamsin and her husband moved to Gorey, it was with reservations. “We were living in Lucan but I was working in Tallaght as a store manager and my husband was working in Leopardstown. The kids were in childcare for four days a week, which at €1,140 a month, was costing more than the mortgage. We couldn’t keep going.
“But I fought it and fought it: ‘I’m Dublin,’ I’d say, ‘Dublin . . . Gorey? That’s my little holiday town.’”
They moved, sharing the driving on the commute, leaving at 7.30am and getting home some 12 hours later – “as long as there were no accidents”. It was unsustainable.
“I got part-time work in Gorey stacking shelves from 9pm to 6am which allowed me to be there for the kids. But that folded,” Tamsin says. Jobs are scarce and she’s on the dole. “The kids are eight and five and I can only work when they’re at school.” Her husband still commutes, leaving at around 8.15am and getting home about 7pm. On the upside, her daughter’s severe asthma has dramatically improved, as has Tamsin’s own chronic tonsillitis, since their lifestyle change. Gorey may have problems but it has managed to retain its old market town heart. “It was lucky not to get an out-of-town shopping centre,” says Malcolm Byrne.
Edel Finan moved here from Artane in 2002 with her husband, Pat, and their two small children, for lifestyle reasons. She believes the town has improved hugely in recent years. “There are five supermarkets now and some really good small traders. And if you want River Island and Next, they’re in Arklow, 30 minutes away. You’d be in Dundrum in 75 minutes or less.
“The whole commuter thing has really improved. The road is great, the bus service is excellent and there are six train services a day, including two early morning ones.”
That contrasts starkly with their first year, during which Pat continued to commute to Hewlett Packard in Leixlip, staying overnight with his sister in Swords. “It was very tough. As soon as he finished there [to take a job in Wicklow], he became ill with pleurisy.”
The big problem is schools. The highly-praised community school – already said to be the biggest in Ireland – has hit “crisis point”, says Finan. “It reached enrolment capacity . . . and now there are 45 students with no school, and they got no prior warning. This is a problem that a lot of people moving from Dublin thought they were leaving behind. The frustrating thing is that the Government has known about it for years.”
“We’re right in the heart of a baby boom, to be fair. It’s not just Gorey,” says Mark Harrop, weighing up the pros and cons of life in Co Wexford. “There’s a better quality of life here, a slower pace. We’re only 15 minutes from the beach.”
The group of friends compares Gorey now to Wicklow – the town where several of them wanted to live, but which is now coming badly through the recession, they believe.
Michael Kavanagh, a community stalwart, was working with Lithographic Universal in Bray seven years ago, having left a “too small” bungalow in Kilpedder for a fine, €138,000 four-bed detached house in Gorey. It was “about the kids”, he said then; there was nothing for them in Kilpedder.
Since then, their 15-year-old, Mia Holly, has made the county camogie team and won gold medals for tennis at the Community Games. “That wouldn’t have happened in Kilpedder,” he says now. Their 22-year-old daughter, Caoimhe, works for a stationery company, owns her own car and still lives at home. “The only problem,” he says, “is when you want to go to college.” Alex (19) is studying at the Dublin Business School and has a part-time job in a pub. Better public transport would allow him to live at home, as he would like, says Michael regretfully.
A few doors down is a house previously owned by a couple who in 2003 were clearly struggling to reconcile poor public transport, commuting and small children.
When they moved closer to the city, the house was bought by Colette and Brian Hogan, originally from Rathfarnham. They had been living in a two-bed apartment in Firhouse. “There wasn’t a chance in hell of affording a home in Rathfarnham. We got a fine, four-bed semi here for half the price of a three-bed there.”
Brian is a “travelling salesman” in wine, but on his office-based days in Dublin, he has a choice between a punctual bus service, which while not as comfortable as the train, is faster than travelling by rail “at 40kph and it’s a disaster”.
“Gorey to Dublin takes two hours for some reason, and even then you’re only in Connolly. The days I’m in Dublin, I’d love to be able to take the train and read the paper. As well as making life easier, it would be good for [doing] business.”
Meanwhile, Colette, who works in PR, commutes by car to Sandyford four days a week, leaving at 8.30am. “It takes an hour, which is okay, but when the weather is bad, the road seems endless.” On the other hand, says Brian, it used to take them 20 minutes to get out of the estate in Firhouse.
There are things they miss. For him, it’s the cosmopolitan air of the capital. For Colette, it’s her mother and sisters. And although she still doesn’t “adore” Gorey, “you’d have to give me a large amount of money to leave now”.
Clodagh, their four-year-old, has shifted their perspective. “We were on the beach at 9.30am building sandcastles,” says Brian happily. “Most days, you’d have that beach all to yourself. There are three swimming pools in Courtown and massive climbing frames. There’s a top dollar sailing club and it’s only 5km from here. And we have a great theatre and cinema now. You wouldn’t have that in Firhouse or Rathfarnham.”
