What we can learn from Ireland's best place

Westport, named by 'The Irish Times' as the Best Place to Live in Ireland, isn't perfect, but it comes close. Its success is a product of careful planning, an innovative approach to voluntary work, and a triumph of public spiritedness. Fourteen years after her last article about the Co Mayo town, KATHY SHERIDANreturns to see what has changed and why it stands out as a place to call home

THE MAN WHO coined the phrase “When I hear the word ‘culture’ . . . I release the safety catch on my pistol” had it easy. He never had to wrestle with words such as “community”. Or “partnership”. For several days this week we wandered around Westport, asking people what made it the best place to live in Ireland. “It’s the community,” they said, over and over. “And partnership”.

The problem, we said a bit testily, is that anyone with a flitter of loyalty will say much the same thing about their own settlement. “Community” and “partnership” trip off tongues so easily nowadays that they mean something only when someone is obliging enough to cite an example of, say, anti-partnership. Involving himself, ideally.

Step up Noel Kavanagh, who was already a major employer in Westport in 1998, when he bought O’Connor’s Fashions on Shop Street. The alterations he had in mind for the premises were clearly not in sympathy with its status as a very prominent listed building, and a battle royal ensued between one hard-nosed, determined grocer and the town council. Somehow, the council prevailed.

“It’s a battle I lost, and happily so,” Kavanagh says now. He tells the story against himself to explain why his message of congratulations to council officials on Monday credited the town’s success in no small part to officialdom. That is not an admission often made by members of the entrepreneurial classes.

He mentions men such as Peter Hynes, the county manager; Martin Keating, the director of services for the Westport area; and Simon Wall, the town architect. “They had a significant part to play in all this . . . by insisting on our conforming to a particular style, sometimes at my own considerable expense,” says Kavanagh wryly. With a string of supermarkets scattered across the west of Ireland, in Northern Ireland and in England, he has dealings with 16 town councils. “Westport’s is right up there at the top,” he says.

Given the general cynicism about politicians and council managements, this is one of the surprising features of Westport’s success story. A willingness to cross party lines for the good of the town is a noble tradition. Members shared the chair even when Fianna Fáil held a majority, says one of that party’s councillors, Margaret Adams. She remembers when they all combined their expenses to fund civic receptions and once even used them to pay for the first load of gravel on the railway line.

It was that long-term solidarity and prioritising of the town that put steel in their spines when council initiatives came under fire. Minister of State for Tourism and Sport Michael Ring – a true “covey”, as locals are known, with Westport lineage that goes back at least to his grandparents – swears that his most testing time in politics was in the 1980s when the town council decided to ban plastic signs. “You can laugh, but that was one of the biggest battles I’ve had to fight. We came up against tremendous political pressure. But we held our ground and we were proven right.”

Signage was always a red-flag issue. Simon Wall – who, significantly, was the first town architect in the country when appointed to Westport, in 1997 – remembers counting no fewer than 38 signs at Knockranny junction alone, “enough to cover three-quarters of an acre when laid on the ground”. The council met a lot of what he delicately calls “negativity” when it took action.

That Westport-first ethos was crucial to the town’s successful drive to protect its core in the era of the bubble. It kept Tesco and others at bay amid demands for out-of-town retail parks, until the retailers caved and settled within the town’s confines.

Westport has no ghost estates. Luck, poor infrastructure and timing played a role, but the council also ensured there was little of the developer-led free-for-all that is evident elsewhere. Although section-23 development and town-renewal incentives seemed to threaten in the late 1990s, the council was far-sighted enough to insist that apartments be family-sized, to prepare for the day when tax incentives ran out. In the meantime, lettings are healthy, avoiding the dark holiday-home syndrome, and the schemes are well managed.

It was a struggle. Developers are what they are, says Seán Staunton. “A lot of them thought a blade of grass was a waste of space,” and it was always up to the councils to keep them in line. Staunton, a former town councillor and a former editor of the Mayo News, remembers developers “complaining bitterly about getting less – far less – than they wanted”. The council was quick to refer schemes to An Bord Pleanála, “a great friend” of the Westport 2000 development plan, says Wall, even though the plan was nonstatutory.

Now the worst of the bubble’s depredations is an idle medical and retail centre on the edge of an estate, which may yet see life in the form of new business incubators.

“You can see the town has developed evenly. There’s no carbuncle stuck on to it,” says New Jersey-born Judy Parker, a veteran of the tough New York rag trade. When I interviewed her in 1998 for a feature on Westport, she was one of a slew of blow-ins who had put down roots. Notably, there were no celebrities among them or members of the political, legal or business set who had overrun places in Connemara or west Cork.

At that time, having come to Wesport only a year before, Rathfarnham man Wall and his art-historian wife, Sinéad, had stumbled on a flourishing, easily accessible visual-arts scene. To Wall, McGing’s bar on a Friday night was like the UCD campus all over again “without the lecture series”. This was because many of the people moving from mainland Europe were an artisan, bohemian crowd, looking for an alternative lifestyle. The Walls are now raising a family here.

“Five years ago, we came for a visit,” Parker said at that time. “We were here 11 days and got four hours of sunshine. And I still felt it was worth a try. They tell me, ‘You’re settling in well,’ but what they don’t think of is that someone has to move first to give you a spot. It’s like, Will they let you sit down?”

This week, when we meet again, she says she has never wavered in that view. “I can’t say I’d never leave, but I don’t want to.” She runs a cafe and ice-cream parlour near the beach at Louisburg and is a director of the volunteer-run Westport Community Radio. “This is a place where businesses expect to lend a helping hand,” she says.

The recession has shifted the sands here, as elsewhere. Emigration and unemployment are clearly issues – though, given the west’s terrible history of loss, they are no worse than in the rest of the country and may even be slightly better. The Allergan company, which makes Botox, is prospering, thus making Westport the Botox capital of the world. It employs more than 1,000 people and is so optimistic about the next 20 years that it has just bought the council’s business-incubator units for extra space. The workwear company Portwest and the fashion and giftwear company Carraig Donn are also valued employers.

AND HERE ISthe most startling part. Although some businesses inevitably close, about 13 new ones have opened this year, aided by council incentives. The 10 or so hotels are full nearly every weekend, boosted by a mutually supportive marketing scheme. The town has a surprisingly vibrant feel, boosted by a flow of tourists from Ireland and elsewhere, taking advantage of midweek hotel prices.

What blow-ins have always found in this far-west corner of Ireland has been a thriving, sophisticated, outward-looking community blessed with a solid core and graceful country manners. As a port it has always been accustomed to new faces drifting through, and, for good or ill, the mass emigration of Mayo people through the centuries had opened them up to other cultures. So when the hospitality industry attracted vast numbers of non-Irish to Westport there were no issues. “The fact that Westport is so cosmopolitan rids us of our parochialism,” says Staunton.

It focused itself firmly on tourism but managed to avoid the twee, film-set feel and the golf-club social hierarchy that had infected similar towns.

At the final judging session for the Best Place to Live competition, one judge worried aloud whether it might be a bit “retirement-homey, hanging-baskety, Stepford-wifeish”. It’s not. Westport is still a living, breathing, working town with a proper, old-fashioned ironmonger’s shop and others that look as if the displays haven’t changed since the 1950s; shops selling tweeds and near-designer boutiques; a SuperValu that has lobsters floating in a tank; a salon offering fish pedicures; fast-food outlets as well as a superb seafood delicatessen and restaurants.

The window boxes are plentiful but restrained, and the ground planting is a colourful riot of French-inspired ornamental broccolis and cabbages as opposed to the old monobloc, Victorian-style displays.

As for the “retirement-homey” vibe, there’s no chance of that. According to Pat Dunne, a teacher at Rice College who came here from Swords, in Co Dublin, 10 years ago, there are more than 1,100 secondary-school students in the town, several thriving sports clubs, including the soccer team, which won the Connacht Cup recently, and a “brilliant” youth-activities club that attracts 500 primary-school children. Not to mention the TidyTowns association’s proudest achievement: the skate park, multipurpose games area and open-air gym for older people, funded with seed money from TidyTowns cash prizes.

Dunne’s 16-year-old daughter, Sadhbh, has just returned from working in an Indian school to which she and her group donated €13,000. She has also found summer work in the town, and was being trained in by a Polish woman at O’Connor’s SuperValu this week.

The TidyTowns phenomenon that infiltrates every Westport pore, along with the town’s startling 97 voluntary organisations (in a population of just over 6,000), are said to comprise about 50 per cent blow-ins.

Pam Flanagan, a former TidyTowns chair whose name is synonymous in these parts with “force of nature”, is a Galway native whose loneliness during her first year here made her aware of the need for community vigilance and support.

She succeeded other strong women, such as Bridie Moran, Lily Cunningham and Elsie Higgins, and now, with a local photographer, Frank Dolan, in the chair, they continue to work hand in hand with the council and other organisations that have shaped a naturally blessed heritage town into a vibrant, glowing, pleasurable, litter-free environment.

“Community spirit” and “partnership” are terms that fail to convey the dynamism of these relationships and 24-hour commitment, but they will have to do. Flanagan is adept at the carrot-and-stick approach. The sticks have included collecting all the litter at the edge of the skate park and threatening to dump it on the skate paths; the problem died. The carrots have included tracking down a graffiti culprit and persuading him to work instead, for €20, alongside an artist in the skate park.

Between them all it means that as much design and pride are put into the social and affordable housing, which is built in small numbers and dotted around the town, as into any other architecture. It means the TidyTowns winnings went not into statues or plaques but into a skate park. It means that something as small, yet as important, as the window boxes are planted and placed by the TidyTowns group but are watered by the council. It means that the virtual 24/7 town-cleaning rota – impossible to sustain for a council that has lost 20 of its 35 staff in 15 years – is maintained by a true alliance of voluntary and council effort.

It’s why we came upon Mary Cannon at 8.30pm on Monday, armed with her litter-picker and plastic bag. It’s why the town was litter-free well before 9am last Monday after a festival that saw the town almost treble its population.

One of the many triumphs of Pam Flanagan and her colleagues is that they have made it fashionable to be on the TidyTowns team. Strangers arriving in Westport and looking for company are advised to contact the TidyTowns people.

AND YET THE QUESTIONkeeps presenting itself. What makes Westport different? If there is a key to the town's authentic, unavoidable community spirit and co-operation, "it lies in the long absence of old-fashioned snobbery", Staunton says. "Take the golf club: you'll find all sorts, from social-welfare recipients to professionals and middle-income groups, there. That had to be nurtured over many years."

A public-sector professional living in the town for about 10 years says that in previous postings there has been an occasional “you are my servant” attitude. “Here the people never lost sight of where they came from . . . There’s a real respect for those who come into the town.”

One example of mutual support often raised is the period when the town’s Catholic church was being refurbished in 2004. It simply moved its Masses to the Church of Ireland for the duration. “The locals are very proud of that,” says Fr Charlie McDonnell, the 40-year-old administrator of Westport parish, who moved here from Castlebar a year ago. “It’s part of that Westport inclusiveness. They see themselves as above that kind of inward-looking stuff. You find a lot of affirmation here, which I think comes from a confidence, not an arrogance, they have within themselves.”

This applies equally to modern relations between the beautiful old Westport House and the town. The council was spiky enough in the 1950s to acquire the magnificent town-centre entrance to the house by compulsory-purchase order and assign the land for social housing. Years later Lord Altamont came across the discarded gates and had to pay to get them back, although the “new” entrance remained a good distance away, at the quay.

His struggle to keep the estate afloat with ideas such as a children’s zoo and caravan site is well documented and the struggle continues for his daughter Sheelyn, the 14th great-granddaughter of Grace O’Malley, who now manages the house.

She is acutely aware of past divisions and the dynamics that led to them, and that the estate’s survival now involves the whole Westport community working together. “I do worry. You never feel 100 per cent sure whether you’re going to be here in six months or not. It’s about being able to get there on time. It’s now or never.”

Last weekend she launched the house and magnificent grounds as a festival venue with a kind of far-west Electric Picnic and 55 acts headlined by Ray Davies and Jools Holland, all with full use of the house as a glorious green room. “That couldn’t have happened 20 years ago,” she says. “The locals didn’t want it. They felt it would be trouble and was too close to town.” Last weekend there were no more public-order offences than on any normal weekend, according to the Garda, and the locals loved it, even in Saturday’s monsoon rain.

Another milestone was reached when the estate’s link to the town’s core was re-established with fine new gates installed at Church Lane and opened for the festival. As a few of us stood on the steps of Westport House on Tuesday, Sheelyn quietly handed a key to the gates to Simon Wall. He swallowed hard. The significance was lost on nobody.

Meanwhile, John O’Callaghan, who pitched his native town for the competition, is “still high”, according to his wife, Noreen. He is dismayed that on his Morning Ireland spot on Monday he forgot to mention the traditional camino walk from Ballintubber to Croagh Patrick today. And this weekend’s Folk Bluegrass Festival. And that he lives in Ennis.