Two families who have moved from Dublin to the west of Ireland talk to Lorna Siggins about the ups and downs of leaving city life

'Hours to get to work, hours to get back, a mortgage you can't afford or, worse, you can't afford a mortgage? No time for the important things - your family, your friends, yourself? Not enough fun? Not enough space? Find a better way to live . . . In the west things can be - and are - different."

The advertising copy may sound very convincing if you are caught tight in a tailback on the M50 and the crèche is about to close. Worse, the crèche has phoned to say your child is ill - one of those days when you need to be bedside, not office-tied, and the debate about affordable childcare is irrelevant.

So if it is only to beat the Quickpick queues for that elusive Lotto win, is the western seaboard worth a try?

"Yup", says the recent Look West initiated by the Western Development Commission (WDC), the statutory body charged with promoting and fostering economic and social development in the seven western counties of Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Clare.

According to the WDC's website, about 75 per cent of people across those seven counties spend 30 minutes or less getting to work. Average houses cost "almost 40 per cent less" in the west than in Dublin.

Larger houses can be "less than half" the price of similar houses in the capital. Rent is "just 60 per cent" of what you'd pay in the east. Childcare costs are "a third cheaper", it continues.

Stop right there, residents of Galway city may cry. There is no small print, but the WDC admits that most of these facts don't apply to the western "capital", where house prices are only marginally lower than in Dublin.

Both rental and childcare fees in Galway are very similar to Dublin, and early morning approaches from all points of the compass - notably Derrydonnell and the Headford Road roundabout - have daily "star turns" on AA Roadwatch bulletins.

The WDC's lyrical description of the west's "landscape, rich heritage and tradition" may also be a little adventurous, given the relentless rate of housing construction and commercial/tourism development in Connemara Gaeltacht villages such as Barna, Moycullen and Spiddal, and right up the western seaboard from Clare to Donegal. As with Leinster, Connacht is awash with unresolved rows about insensitive planning, lack of infrastructure, insufficient public transport and treatment of waste.

Many of the "landscapes of unparalleled beauty", also mentioned on the website, are being snatched up for golf courses and other leisure developments as more and more farmers opt out of the land. There are exceptions, such as the small group of farmers and fisherfolk on Co Mayo's Erris peninsula who are fighting to save their coastal environment from what they believe to be the worst impacts of the €900 million Corrib gas field development.

That said, there are peaceful little pockets, as Tina and Billy Birdthistle found when they moved to the Co Mayo village of Ballinrobe and set up business in Ballindine on the Galway-Mayo border two years ago. Tina, from Dublin, and Billy, from Limerick, had spent seven years in Celbridge, Co Kildare, commuting daily to the capital. Both knew they wanted something more for themselves and their three children.

"I was working in Heineken on the Naas Road, which was a one-hour journey each way," Tina says. Billy is a self-employed pub designer and refitter, and had taken a job in Shrule, not far from Ballindine, when it all "happened", she recalls.

"He got to know John Hennigan, who owns a garage in Ballindine, and a restaurant right beside it named Ellie McGuire's. The place came on the market, John was looking for a 21-year-lease arrangement, and it was something I had always wanted to do."

Initially, the family planned to build in Clonbur, near the western lakes, but "the kids rebelled", she laughs. "It is something you have to take into account with teenagers - they have their friends, and they want company, and if you move to somewhere too isolated, you are going to spend your life in the car again."

Ballinrobe represented compromise. Their eldest daughter, Romy (19), did her Leaving Certificate there and is now at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, while Bobbie Jean (16), their second daughter, is going to boarding school in Limerick. Their eight-year-old son, Zack, is at primary school in Ballinrobe and "very happy about it too".

Establishing the restaurant has involved a substantial time investment, but has already yielded valuable returns in terms of new friendships. The staff employed by the Birdthistles sent the couple to Venice for five days at Christmas. "It was fantastic! Where would you get them?" Tina says.

There have been disadvantages, however. Her father died last year after an illness. "I went up as much as I could but not being there daily was very hard - particularly afterwards," Tina says. "You have to take these things into account." She also advises anyone considering the move to research schools very carefully, and to check out distances to swimming pools and cinemas.

"If your kids don't settle, you won't. And facilities that we take for granted in Dublin can mean a lot when you're away. There are also times when one can get very despondent for no particular reason," she says. She laughs as she recalls one occasion when business seemed slack.

"There were four very quiet evenings in a row, and it was only later in the week I discovered that the regulars were busy with lambing and couldn't get away. It was nothing we had done!"

Siobhán Barrett-Lavery and her husband, John Lavery, moved west in 2001 from Dublin, where they had enjoyed life as a young married couple in an apartment in Bachelors Walk. "We had everything on our doorstep - restaurants over the bridge in Temple Bar, great friends," Siobhán says. She worked as a nurse in the Mater hospital, while John is a maintenance fitter. However, both had yearnings to return to their roots; Siobhán is from Ballymote, Co Sligo, and John has family in both Limerick and Galway.

Coincidentally, they also opted for Ballinrobe. "We are both very keen on angling, John particularly, and it seemed close enough to home for both of us," she says. They rented for six months, bought six months later, and are very happy on their estate where their two-year-old daughter attends a crèche.

Now expecting their second child, the couple both work in Castlebar. "We bought at a time when prices were reasonable here, although they are increasing now, and we've made many friends among newcomers like ourselves," Siobhán says. "It does take time to settle in though, and I miss friends a lot. I don't miss the traffic, crime or security. We were never broken into in Dublin, but once when we went on holidays there were eight break-ins in our apartment block."

The WDC says traffic on its website has exceeded expectations, with 15,300 "hits", averaging 1,100 a week, to date. Dr Pat O'Hara, WDC policy manager, attributes this principally to the cost of housing and the hassle of commuting.

"After all, in Donegal, Mayo, Roscommon and Leitrim, you can buy a three-bed semi for under €210,000."

For more information about the WDC's Look West campaign, see www.lookwest.ie or contact the WDC at Dillon House, Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, tel: 0907-61441