The Rural Resettlement Scheme which began in Clare in 1993 is an imaginative means of offering people in urban areas a chance to move with their families to save our the delights of rural life.
However, many of those who live outside the main cities live in towns and villages, which are close-knit communities, somewhat different from the city-dweller's stereotyped view of "living in the country" and, in their new surroundings, the anonymity which city folk take for granted no longer applies.
The town of Ballybunion, Co Kerry, provided an illustration last week. A small community, tightly knit to the point where one resident could recite the names of all her neighbours and their children - became exercised upon discovering that a man who had served a sentence for rape had come to live in their midst. This is where rural resettlement becomes difficult.
When a Dublin family and their children decided to leave their home in the capital to avail of the resettlement scheme, they were offered and accepted a new home in Kerry. They were the first Dublin family to be relocated to Kerry under the scheme.
They moved there four years ago and then applied to Kerry County Council for a local authority house. They were allocated one in the Marconi estate comprising some 40 houses and as many as 80 children.
The family were made welcome and got on well with their new neighbours. Then, last February, something happened to change everything. The family invited to live with them a nephew who had twice been convicted of rape and who had just recently finished a 12-year prison sentence.
This man lived quietly in the estate and was unobtrusive. The young boys and girls played after school in the estate - not a stone's throw from the Old Course in Ballybunion where Bill Clinton played golf on September 5th last year.
However, once word got out last week that he was living there, a situation, you might say, developed. It brought Rural Resettlement Ireland, particularly its Kerry branch, under the spotlight in a way the organisation would not have wished.
However, contrary to some reports, there was not a vigilante-style effort to drive out the family.
It is clear that it was made known to them both by fellow residents and the Garda authorities that their nephew was not welcome in the estate. There were sincerely held fears for the safety of young girls and elderly women. The upshot was that the family and their nephew left Ballybunion in a hurry and they will not be coming back. The story appeared in the Kerryman last Wednesday - the following day they were gone.
Ms Maureen Hartney Cronin, a board member of Rural Resettlement Ireland said afterwards: "[They] were a nice family and I feel sorry for the predicament in which they found themselves, having given a roof to their nephew. There are well-established vetting procedures in the organisation and we liase closely with the Garda before offering applicants a new home.
"But how was I or anyone else to know that [the family] had given their nephew a place to stay? Our aim is to match families to the most suitable accommodation and since April of last year we have introduced even tighter controls involving data clearance with the Garda authorities. We now have 300 applicants on our books awaiting placement."
The publicity generated by the Ballybunion incident has done no favours for Rural Resettlement Ireland but its work will go on.
Every family resettled by the organisation to areas where the population is in decline releases a local authority house elsewhere. Many of those resettled find work they could not get in the cities and find their children are in a safer and cleaner environment. In Kerry, 72 families have been resettled since 1995. A small percentage has moved back to the cities or to another county.
The recent incident in Ballybunion was unfortunate and understandably upsetting for residents in the Marconi estate, but lessons will have been learned and the resettlement scheme will continue to offer people a new lease of life.