Making the great escape

COMMUTER COUNTIES 8: Laois: To avoid high housing costs, and to find a better quality of life, some Dubliners are heading as far as Portlaoise, writes Kathy Sheridan

Many people seem to have ended up in Portlaoise by default. "We kept looking, going further and further down the road . . ." is a common comment. "You begin looking in the outer suburbs, then you're in Kildare, and suddenly you're thinking, 'sure Portlaoise is only down the road and that's a lovely, airy house in a safe estate, and we can afford it'."

Such stories, though told with a laugh, often conceal an ocean of loneliness. "I remember a dark, dreary March morning after we moved, sitting in the middle of the livingroom saying 'what have I done'," says Maire, married to a commuter who is gone 12 hours a day. "I'd be so terribly lonely when my husband went to work. I felt very much alone."

From her house in a tiny village in north-west England, Kathryn Blackburn could see across to where her father and she had gone to school and where, she naturally assumed, her daughter Niamh would go in time. All changed when her husband, Michael - an insurance company statistician - was transferred to Ireland. "I knew I had to be positive for Niamh's sake," she says.

They needed a substantial four-bed house to accommodate her grandmother, and it had to be near a station because Michael had always commuted by train. With a budget of about £250,000, they began looking along the N7. "Is that where the prison is?" wondered an English friend, helpfully, while they were still struggling to pronounce the name.

The prison crops up often. Anne Kelly, a Dubliner in need of a place to live for herself and her baby three years ago, saw Portlaoise as purely temporary. "All I could think of was the prison. I couldn't see myself living here in a month of Sundays."

To Julie Lacken's friends too, Portlaoise was the place with the prison. Originally from Crumlin, she and her husband were living in Inchicore. "I was a city girl, used to hopping on a bus and heading into town, used to having everything around me."

The idea of building their own house in "the sticks" between Emo and Mountmellick, nine miles from Portlaoise, was "100 per cent his". But, she adds, "there was also trouble arising in some parts of the area we were in. And I began to think, what kind of a life do I want for my children?"

Deirdre Brown and her husband, who arrived via Cullahill, Connecticut and Maynooth, were among those who kept looking further down the road. "Prices were dramatically different," she says. They got what they wanted, a house on its own on half an acre. "I love where we live. The kids are growing up with fields all around them." But it's not without a price. He commutes to St Stephen's Green, leaving the house at 5.30 a.m. "In the evening, it takes a solid two hours. If he's home by 7.30 p.m., that would be very good," says Deirdre.

Michael Blackburn - who has tried motorbike, car and train - is a tad bemused by all this emphasis on commuting. "In the UK, commuting is part of life. Here, it's relatively new, only for the past six or seven years." But while people might do the same journey from Surrey to London without a murmur, "the difference is," as Kathryn points out, "that there, there would be a train every 30 minutes with only a couple of stops on the way."

To an eager house hunter working in the city centre, the commute looks a doddle in theory - just over an hour on the train. Though Michael is only a four-minute drive from Portlaoise station, once allowances are made for the 8.11 leaving at 8.15 and getting in for 9.20, followed by the 30-minute bus crawl up the quays and on to Nassau Street, it's little short of two hours before he gets to his Dawson Street office.

Leaving the office at 6.30 p.m. for the 7.15 p.m. train, leaves the evening commute, door-to-door, also at around two hours. "It's a trade-off," says the very pragmatic Michael. "By coming here, we got a 3,500 sq ft house on three-quarters of an acre. I couldn't have had a place like that on the southside of Dublin."

He sees nothing much wrong with the train service or frequency; he passes the time using his laptop or reading. But if commuters were canvassed, he says, the most serious complaint by far would be about cigarette smoke.

"CIÉ seems to think it's a great idea to stagger the smoking carriages but the smoke just moves into all the carriages. People ignore the signs and conductors just walk past them. It's a huge issue."

At Heuston, then, there is the total bedlam involved in simply getting onto the bus. "Last week, I saw a blind man with a dog being knocked into the side of the bus by a young lady with a backpack. Inspectors are there controlling the flow of buses but completely ignore it all. Yet a simple snake barrier - like you see in a bank queue - would cost next to nothing".

Meanwhile, the women back home are focused on building a new life, on the practicalities of childcare, finding schools (a nightmare for many), GPs and speech therapists (for which the Midland Health Board gets high praise).

Some, like Kathryn (who holds a degree in psychology and education studies), got stuck in locally. She helped to establish that invaluable resource for newcomers, the mothers and toddlers group, and is now also working locally. Much of this was made possible, she says, by introductions from the one person all these women have in common - Sonya Duggan (herself a blow-in), of the Kilminchy schoolhouse and crèche on the old Dublin road.

Three years on, Anne Kelly has a second child and a new house, purchased under the shared ownership scheme with Laois County Council: "I never thought I'd have a brand new house on a brand new housing estate."

Julie is settling. Her husband, who was commuting to the Long Mile Road, has got a job in Carlow. "And I know my kids are happy now. I'm a Dub, but I wouldn't want my kids to be raised in Dublin."

Maire may never settle in a town. "The kids love it but I'm still only getting to know Portlaoise. Even though you're living in the middle of an estate, you don't necessarily know your neighbours. The kids around here are still too small to go out playing with one another . . . But I don't think of this as my permanent home. I know I'll move on."

While acknowledging the well-run Dunamaise theatre and new cinema, everyone reckons that Portlaoise town needs a massive commercial upgrade: a bigger Dunnes Stores, more shops, restaurants, children's amenities. Meanwhile, that lost custom is spread around Carlow, Johnstown, Kilkenny, Tullamore and Liffey Valley.

But the biggest challenge ahead is the teenage one: "I'd hate to be a teenager in this town," says one mother, with feeling. Time to get stuck in again, then.

TOMORROW: Co Carlow.