A first Christmas in our home outside Dublin: ‘We’ve landed in paradise’

“We’ve landed in paradise,” says Liam McLoughlin, looking out the gigantic window of his home office southwards towards the glistening sweep of Kenmare Bay, the Beara Peninsula and the Caha mountains.

In March 2020, he and his wife, Sue McLoughlin, had packed the car and were setting off from their Dublin home to spend St Patrick’s weekend at their recently purchased holiday home, which is about 5km from the village of Sneem, in Co Kerry. And then coronavirus upturned the world and that was it, he says. “We said, we’re never going back.”

Anecdotally, there are lots of stories of people like the McLoughlins who have fled the capital for green fields and blue seas, but data for the period since the start of the pandemic is harder to find.

Traditionally, figures from the Central Statistics Office show that when buying outside the capital, Dublin buyers tend to favour the commuter counties of Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, or, when buying farther afield, the eastern coastal counties of Wexford, Louth and Waterford, as well as along the Wild Atlantic Way. However, the national statistical agency says it has no insight yet into the numbers moving from urban areas during the period of the pandemic, so for now the scale of the trend is difficult to quantify.

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In common with many people taking stock of their lives and considering their options, in the past few years Liam stepped back from his 40-year career in financial services in order to attain a better work/life balance.

Always having had an ambition to live beside the sea, the couple were looking for a holiday or retirement house for some time and, having moved the focus to Kerry, Sue spotted a vacant holiday home in October 2019. While viewing it with the estate agent, they got chatting with the man cutting the grass, who turned out to be the owner, and made him an offer on the day. For the “fairly basic rectangular four-bed bungalow” they paid “well under the asking price”. It has one and a half acres, a huge patio (“the helipad”), and two outhouses; one a former milking parlour and the other a shed that they renovated as their home office. “We are both telly addicts, but we spent the first nine months just looking out the windows,” says Liam.

Still involved in a portfolio of companies including Shipyard Technology Ventures, Liam now works 9 to 5 (“as opposed to it taking over my whole life ... if anyone called a meeting in Dublin, I’d say ‘Why?’ ”), and is involved with the Sneem Digital Hub. Sue has reconfigured her accounting practice to work remotely, and is building a client base locally.

Liam expects one or two of their children to move too. 'To their credit, they can see how happy we are'

After a year and a half, the couple, like the garden they are learning to tame, have bedded in well, with new friends in nearby houses and old friends visiting for relaxed weekends when restrictions permit. In Dublin, says Liam, “we used to wave at our neighbours at 7am, and see friends only for rushed dinners at weekends.” Even Max and Toby, their two young golden retrievers, have grown wary of traffic noise during their infrequent visits to Dublin.

Liam describes Sneem as a cosmopolitan set-up, with 60 per cent of residents originally from elsewhere in Ireland and from other countries including Germany, France and England. There is no local clique, he says; even the golf club at Parknasilla has no timesheet for Sunday mornings. He and Sue are involved in walking, storytelling, bridge and crafts clubs, though he admits that as a Longford man he is not inclined towards sea-swimming.

The one question they had before moving, says Liam, was that of leaving their three adult children, but they have found that the “quality time spent together makes up for the lack of frequency”; one of their daughters will spend Christmas with them, and his mother will visit in the new year. And, he states plainly, he expects one or two of their children to move too. “To their credit, they can see how happy we are.”

At the other end of the child-rearing spectrum, a pandemic-induced house move helped one young family find peace and start a new life. “I really feel like the luckiest person,” says Rebecca Horan, tucked into fairylit, festive Enniskerry, in Co Wicklow, “and I don’t know why we deserve it.”

A media professional – she is head of production at SpaceTo – Horan and her husband, Jason McNelis, lived for some years in a mews house in Dublin 6, working in the city and driving their daughter to preschool. And while they were happy, they felt they were “running on empty, chasing our tails”. She had lived in Dublin for 20 years but had long wanted to move to Kildare or Wicklow; McNelis, who grew up in South Africa within walking distance of a beach and played sport all his life, “didn’t buy into the Dublin thing”.

When their life slowed down in lockdown, the couple’s perspective began to change but their lives were altered, and saddened, by pregnancy loss. At the end of a rough week in July 2020, they drove to Enniskerry and as they went uphill out of the village, they happened upon a new housing development backing on to the woods adjacent to Powerscourt Golf Club and somehow crystallised Horan’s dream. On impulse, they wangled their way into a viewing, and learned that the last available house had just come back on the market. “I fell in love,” she says. “I had to have that house.”

In contrast to her husband’s pragmatism – the logistics, the cost, the timing, moving their daughter – she felt “it needed to happen, because nothing else good has happened,” and they paid a refundable deposit. As the idea of moving took hold of the couple, they put their mews on the market, and after a quick sale and a swift move they became Sika Woods’ “lone rangers; a bit lonely, a bit intimidated” until their friendly, sociable neighbours started to move in, their little girl began to settle and their luck changed.

Within a month, Horan became pregnant, and while she was filled with trepidation she was minded very carefully and their healthy baby girl was born on her due date, in August. McNelis’s parents, like his brother, have moved to Ireland from South Africa, and friends who Horan had thought “would be allergic to the countryside” have also moved out. They’re now planning their first Christmas of their new life, in their new home, full of gratitude. “I have this thank God’ feeling,” she says. “It was a huge thing to bring this baby home safely.”

Finding the right house when least expecting it also spurred Jen Connell and her husband, Shane Keyes, to leave the capital. While visiting her family in Limerick last Christmas, having toyed with the idea of leaving Dublin – even thinking about moving to France – they took a leap of faith.

On the one hand, they asked themselves whether they needed more change in their life when the world was upside down; on the other, within what seemed like no time they had made an offer on one of only two houses they had viewed during their break. By springtime they had bought a historic Georgian house a few minutes’ walk from the village of Castleconnell, surrounded by trees to feel like the countryside, but beside houses to feel connected.

“Covid was the catalyst,” says Connell, who is creative director of Lifestyle Sports and who showcased her flair for interior design – “my expensive hobby” – on Instagram and on RTÉ’s Home of the Year, which featured their previous house, a south Dublin new-build infused with colour and glamour. “We always dreamed of working from home, while loving working with people. We’re fortunate that what was available was what we needed.”

The house, built around 1790, was beautifully and carefully restored by the previous owners. This suits Keyes and Connell, who advises homebuyers to seek out a house that suits their lifestyle. “We always dreamed of an old house but didn’t want a renovation project: owning and managing a house is enough work.”

The gloss they have put on the elegant house, even in the few months since they moved in, displays fun and personality: refreshingly, Connell’s desk is between two of the windows in the grand drawingroom and within easy reach of cuddles and walks with Lily, their golden retriever. (“Why have pets if you can’t spoil them?” she says.) Like her humans, Lily is very welcome by the fire at the Kingfisher pub in the village.

Family members have come to stay and the couple are planning safe get-together over Christmas. “We enjoy spending quality time, not just feeling moments,” says Connell, who acknowledges having taken a little longer than her husband to settle in. Castleconnell was famed as a spa resort in the 18ah century, and 300 years later Keyes enjoys regular dips in the River Shannon. The couple relish the historical discoveries they have made, and recognise the responsibility of caretaking an old house. It sounds like returning to live close to Limerick amplifies Connell’s realisation that while “sometimes you can feel that if you’re moving home you’re moving backwards”, there is no contradiction if it is balanced with progress, and a feeling of adventure.

Census data shows that in the year to April 2016, 18,700 Dublin residents left the capital; the next census, scheduled for April 2022, will reflect internal migration patterns in the year to that date, which should make for very interesting reading.

In the meantime, back in Sneem, when asked if he would change anything about the move, Liam McLoughlin says: “Our only regret is that we didn’t do it sooner.”