From Weekend 1
lived in. Harbour Village: 17 built, with one bought to be lived in. It is believed that of all the houses completed in Westport last year, up to 75 per cent were bought by investors under the renewal scheme. Meanwhile, as the town booms and businesses thrive, young local couples unable to afford Westport prices (Westlands houses for example have doubled in price since completion) are forced to leave the area to find first homes.
The county council, equally stymied by the lack of affordable building land, has acquired a plot from which it intends to sell sites to eligible locals. Judy Parker, a member of Westport's Housing Association, reckons a big part of the problem lies in the two-month rent restriction: "We need new housing. It's just a pity so much of it is going on speculation. I've no objection to a tax shelter but I'd like to see it include long-term renting."
Meanwhile, property prices are the talk of the town. Karl Rosenkranz of the Olde Railway Hotel is somewhat bemused at the huge prices being paid by investors for family-sized houses.
"There must be 400-500 houses and apartments being built or bought under the scheme with the idea of letting them out. There are people who have paid £115,000 for the house, then another £40,000 to kit it out. But the problem is renting them out. I know of one guy who managed only to rent his out for one week last year. I think the accountants are leading people astray. There is going to be a recession. Five years will see a downturn. Is what's being done here now sustainable?"
Business property is also a hot topic. Don McGreevy recently bought an old butcher's shop - 1,200 sq ft of ground floor beside his newsagents - for well over £222,000. "And every penny of it borrowed," he says. "That would have sold for less than £100,000 four years ago." Within days, another butcher's shop with a 13-ft frontage sold for £262,000. Yesterday, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, hit town to turn the sod on a £5 million wet weather facility (a much needed facility but cause of another sour note involving demolition of a minor listed building).
Purpose-built B & Bs are increasingly plush and hotels are furiously adding on 140 rooms here, 130 there, 30 round the corner.
For now, the sun is shining - metaphorically anyway - on Westport. Allergan employs around 1,000 and Hughes Brothers is another big employer, along with several others. The town has a sound industrial base, separate from tourism (which is why the Dutchman probably got it right). So tourism, as local accountant Stephen Walsh puts it, is "the icing on the cake" for most.
Not, however, for the master of Westport House, Lord Altamont, 13th great grandson of Grace O'Malley, aka Jeremy and Lord Sligo around the town. In the late 1950s, his father - advised to give up the struggle to keep the estate intact - tested the market and got two firm offers for the magnificent house and estate: the first offer was for £7,500, the second for £6,000 - and that included demolition of the house. "We felt there had to be more to it that that," he says wryly.
Now the Westport estate is like a self-contained village. It's a thriving family business, employing 100 people through the summer, attracting 60,000 day visitors a year and another 10,000 to stay. While the house remains a huge draw to a certain market (though hardly a profitable one), its appeal is limited and the Altamonts had to diversify to make a living. Attractions such as the children's zoo, train rides, rowing boats, the Supabounce, the hill-slide, the par-three golf course, singing pub, pony riding and lake and river fishing, are now the carrots to draw families in on one-day tickets or for several weeks, using the estate's self-catering caravan and camping park. And clearly, it works.
"But what Dublin totally fails to understand is that the tourist industry in Ireland is very, very seasonal," he says. "In Dublin, it is year-round because it's got the gin-and-tonic set which is very rich and numerically very large. And it also has its matches and concerts etc. But here, 90 per cent of the money we make is taken in just eight weeks, beginning around now. It is scary because you never quite know what might hit you. We remember the bank strikes, the ESB strikes. . ."
He has had more recent problems, notably one in which the county council decided that the only suitable place for a sewage treatment plant was on a "particularly beautiful part of the estate. They pushed it through and I believe that in time to come, it will be seen to constitute modern vandalism."
By all accounts, Lord Altamont was never a schmoozer, either to Dublin or to authority of any kind. He found a kindred spirit in another maverick, the late Monsignor Horan, who built Knock Airport "in spite of Dublin - the most important piece of infrastructure for the west of Ireland this century. `We don't want the west of Ireland to end up a bird sanctuary' is the kind of thing he used to say", he says with a wistful smile. He approves of the town's development, though like many locals, urges caution at this point: "It is probably Ireland's most beautiful small town and there is a risk from now on that the wrong development could take place."
But in fact, the danger may be past. The renewal scheme is finished and development will level out as a result. And old Westport is still there, intact and strong, its continuity assured by real coveys like artist Breda Burns, one of those who left and returned. (You can only be a covey apparently - a term frequently used in Westport - if your parents, and preferably your grandparents, hail from the town). She is comfortable in this Westport. "It's still the kind of town where I could be painting a wall one day and be at a civic reception the next."
It's a common sentiment. "Westport isn't like a film-set - like some tourist towns," says Karl Rosenkranz. "It's still the kind of town where if you're the farmer, the shoemaker, the fisherman, or the big businessman, they will all sit and drink together, they will all bid good day to each other. . . It really is that kind of place."