Connumter Counties Revisited: Co Westmeath:In a far-flung Westmeath suburb, thrown up by the exodus from the capital during the boom, most of the transplanted Dubs are settled and satisfied – but one family is considering a move back
ONCE UPON a time, there was just the pretty little Bord na Móna housing scheme beside the village. And suddenly, the boom threw up a startling city suburb on the opposite side of the homicidal N6. Who would be mad enough to move to such a place? Dubs. That’s who.
With disarming honesty and glee, the – when we first met them in 2003 – recounted how they had sold modest Dublin homes for “fabulous money”, and were able to buy a fine, new house with a big garden down here for “buttons”, plus a car. A startling number had parents and siblings who came for a look, marvelled and did the same themselves.
Ah, but give them a couple of winters in deepest Westmeath, we thought, fighting the smelly, inadequate sewerage system, the lack of amenities, the tailbacks on the N4 commute, and surely they’d be off?
Not Frank and Phil Fay. They abandoned Walkinstown for Rochfortbridge nine years ago, arriving mortgage-free, with three children at the delicate ages of 16, 14 and 11.
Frank, who worked shifts with the Maynooth-based ambulance service, always wanted country life. Phil hated Rochfortbridge for a couple of years: “I just missed family and the closeness of everything.”
Their daughter Aisling was 18 in 2003 when The Irish Timesasked if she intended to kick the Westmeath dust off her heels. "If you'd asked me last summer, I'd have said yeah, definitely. Now I don't know," she said.
Today, her father’s back garden is bursting with animal, plant and vegetable life (including a large aviary singing with exotic finches). He has acquired extra ground to accommodate the pond, the greenhouse and the free-range chickens. “It’s the Good Life!” he laughs. He still works for the ambulance service in Maynooth. Phil also works in Maynooth. “Dublin doesn’t seem as far now as it did then,” she says. Would she ever go back? “I don’t know. I wouldn’t because the kids are here. But Dublin is still your home.”
The kids are here indeed, chortles Frank. “Oh they were always going back to Dublin. Do you remember? ‘We can’t wait,’ they’d be saying. But not one of them did.”
Aisling, who works in childcare in Maynooth, married another Dub transplant to Rochfortbridge and they’ve bought a house in the next estate. Gary , now 23 and in the Army, has bought in the same estate as his parents. Padraig (20) works as a plumber and fitter, and still lives at home.
“There’s definitely no sign of a wholesale move back in that generation,” says Frank. “There are four or five lads who grew up with ours and they’re now renting a house between them around the corner.”
Sheila Doyle is hijacked to describe how her brother Sean arrived nine years ago with his wife and two children, driven out of Finglas by joyriding and stolen cars, then out to the commuter belt by house prices. Parents, siblings and their children steadily joined them – some for the prices, some with small mortgages, or some, like Sheila herself, with no mortgage at all. There are 21 of them now.
She remembers the security of being able to drop their 12-year-old to the cinema in Mullingar. “I’d never have dropped a 12-year-old to a cinema in Dublin. I’d have been the kind who said there was no life outside Finglas. Now I’d never go back. My social life is better down here. Everyone is very friendly.”
In 2003, Darrin and Caroline Melwani had just two small children, and Gerard and Josephine Ford had one. Both couples had been squeezed out of Dublin by house prices. The Melwanis – both Dublin-based civil servants – were catching buses to work at staggered times, one starting at 6.45am, the other waiting to do the local creche run at 7.20. Their near-neighbours, the Fords, were commuting to Intel in Leixlip, a 40-60 minute journey, after dropping Ciara to the creche at 7.15am.
Both have made serious additions to their families since then. The Melwanis now have five children, and parents on both sides moved to the village. The Fords have four children now, and continue to work full-time at Intel, with the help of a local woman who handles the childcare. Josephine is in the office from 10am to 5.30pm, but often takes night meetings at home by phone bridge, involving participants all over the US.
Two cars are essential now to facilitate clashing child schedules, but they love the “safe, clean and warm” schools, the security of knowing their neighbours, the communal vigilance over the children, and the ease of knowing they can just walk into people’s houses without calling ahead. “It’s a very natural, not contrived sense of community,” she says.
At the Melwanis’ house, both Darrin and Caroline are on a day off. He still gets the 6.25am bus, arriving home at about 5.30pm. “It goes the old route, but that’s much quieter now – though it’s still 2½ hours out of your day.”
Caroline has been dogged by pregnancy-related ill-health, forcing her to take sick leave for much of the past four years. Now back at work, she goes in on Mondays and Fridays, while Darrin is using his unpaid parental leave to work a three-day week. The result is that one parent is always there. It has cost him a 40 per cent cut in salary (“plus the 16 per cent we’ve lost in the past two years”), but he is grateful for the job’s flexibility: “In fairness, there’s no way we’d be able to do this anywhere else.” Darrin’s mother passed away in Westmeath, leaving the family with a wholehearted appreciation of the county’s healthcare system.
After a while, they drop the surprising news that they’re scouting out schools with a view to moving back to Dublin. Caroline has inherited a house on the Navan Road, which is now unoccupied. “It’s a kind of experiment, I suppose,” she says. “We were both born and reared in Dublin,” says Darrin. “We still have jobs there. There is nothing negative I can say about Rochfortbridge. We loved it here. We intend to give it a year in Dublin and we’ll come back for weekends. The two eldest kids are ready for it, and they’ll see more of their cousins. But of course, we won’t be able to let the younger kids play outside like they do here. The other thing I’m not looking forward to is having the Mater as our local hospital. The hospital in Mullingar and the healthcare system in the county was absolutely excellent.”
They’re departing just as Rochfortbridge is settling. The sewerage has finally been sorted, though the water supply is an episodic disaster, and delivered through asbestos piping, which periodically bursts. A bright, well-supported shopping centre has sprung up opposite the houses, and there’s a promise of local jobs when a new energy plant gets under way. The motorway and bypass have sorted the traffic problems. However, the tolls – a swingeing €2.90 each way – continue to infuriate. Many use the old route to save money. If Derek Doyle uses the new roads to visit his mother in Huntstown, he is tolled four times. “Yet, if you lived this side of Maynooth you could drive all the way to Wicklow on new roads and no toll. It’s unbelievable.”
