Life & Style

Best Place to Live in Ireland 2021: Malahide and Glaslough are neck and neck

With a week to go, the north Dublin suburb and Monaghan village lead nominations

Dublin suburb Malahide (above) has been nominated 129 times. Photograph: Getty

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Conor Goodman
Thu Jul 15 2021 - 12:30

With a little over one week of entry time remaining, there have been more than 1,000 entries for the Irish Times Best Place to Live in Ireland 2021 competition. Locations in Dublin are the most popular at this juncture, having received a total of 239 entries.

The north Dublin suburb of Malahide accounts for more than half of these with 129 entries, bringing it neck and neck with the Co Monaghan village of Glaslough, which has been nominated 130 times.

On a county-by-county basis Dublin is followed by Monaghan with 199 entries in total.

Altogether, there have been 1,064 entries so far for the 32-county competition.

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County-by-county breakdown

The Irish Times launched its search for the Best Place to Live in Ireland 2021 in June, and invited people countrywide to nominate their favourites. The nominated places will be researched and put before a panel of judges, who will choose an eventual winner in September.

The Irish Times ran the original Best Place to Live contest in 2012, when Westport, Co Mayo, was selected as the overall winner. It won for its beautiful natural and built environment, sustainable transport and employment opportunities, but most noteworthy was its indomitable community spirit – exemplified in the town’s 90-plus voluntary organisations.

This year's competition is supported by Randox Health. To enter, simply go to irishtimes.com/bestplace where you will be invited to write a short "pitch" of 300 words or less for the place you think is the best in Ireland. All instructions are on the irishtimes.com/bestplace website.

Criteria

What’s a “place”? You decide: it could be a town, village, city, suburb, island, or other distinct community – such as a peninsula, valley, townland or even a county.

Each place will be judged on criteria including: natural amenities; buildings; community initiatives and spirit; presence of clubs, societies and activities; good local services; diversity; a welcome for outsiders; transport links; employment opportunities; local economy; the price of property and housing supply; cost of living; digital links for distance working; safety and security . . . and the X factor.

Closing date: July 25th.

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