Longford is just one of the many towns that rushed to develop during the boom. Now it is left with a legacy of vacant homes, an empty shopping centre and ghostly quiet housing estates
YOU MAKE your way along the deserted laneway as the early morning mist still hovers above the hedgerows. After a couple of miles, the first houses come into view, just beyond the ditch. It is eerily quiet, almost like a post-apocalyptic scene from a science-fiction movie.
There are no cars in the driveways, no people tending to their garden on this Saturday morning, no signs of life, except for a child's bike left at the side of one house.
Wires dangle from the sides of most of the houses, plastic sheeting is still attached to the windows, and water pipes from the empty buildings lead nowhere. Mildew is growing on some of the walls, while weeds are beginning to sprout through some of the fresh tarmac.
"McArt Meadows," reads the sign on the main road, "an exclusive development of 12 luxury homes built to the highest standard", complete with sketches of a bar, restaurant and a manicured green area that were to accompany the development.
"There's been no work done here for over a year and a half now," says one occupant, looking out on a muddy bank where the bar and restaurant were due to be built. "It can feel a bit lonely, it's very, very quiet. There are just two homes with people in them here. But inside it's nice, warm and roomy, which is something." As you make your way closer to Longford town, it seems as if there are phantom housing estates around every other corner.
Off Battery Road, down a narrow laneway and past the tennis courts, lies another. "Battery Court - you'll know you've arrived," the sign boasts, opposite an empty showhouse and glass-fronted sales room. "Longford's most prestigious address for the discerning buyer."
About half of the hundred or so houses are built, with painted walls and neat grass. Directly across the road, the jagged concrete edifice of dozens of other half-finished housing units reaches high into the sky.
There is no sign of activity. You need to be careful on the road, as it hasn't got its final layer of tarmac. On this Saturday afternoon, there is life in just three homes. One resident, a Polish worker who lives here with his girlfriend, is renting, and has just come back from doing the weekly shop. "I am not here long, so I don't know if others are going to move in," he says. "It's quiet, but very dark at night. There are no lights in the houses and no street lights."
But it's not just the houses that are lying empty. There are vacant shopping centres, retail units, business parks all across the county. They sprouted up at the height of the economic boom, aimed at catering to the town's growing population and developing economy. Fuelled by Section 23 tax incentives, the frenzied development appeared to be easy money for developers, investors and home-owners.
Among these projects is the 1,900-sq m Longford Town Centre, which was completed earlier this year. Its glossy brochure aimed at prospective tenants sounds like a relic from another era. "Meet the Celtic Tiger's cubs," it says, proclaiming that the area is densely populated with "young, high income earners who see the town as a key destination for shopping". Without an anchor tenant, it has been sitting vacant behind steel fencing since the summer.
Today, as the town feels the claws of the property downturn, credit crunch and recession, the empty buildings resemble grim monuments to the death of the Celtic Tiger and the over-exuberance of the boom years.
Commuter-belt counties stretching from Longford in the west, Carlow in the south and Cavan in the north are beginning to buckle under the strain of the economic downturn. Their towns and villages exploded in recent years, with populations in some areas doubling or tripling in size. Now, they're on the front-line of the recession, bearing the brunt of layoffs, lenghtening dole queues and a collapse in property prices.
IN MANY WAYS, Longford's story shouldn't be that surprising. For a county that felt abandoned and neglected during the waves of emigration and recession, it suddenly felt its time had come when the economy began to soar. It was damned if it wasn't going to grab the opportunity with both hands.
Places such as Longford, just over an hour's drive to Dublin, were among the areas that looked set to be transformed most dramatically. The population leaped by about 20 per cent during the boom years. Many were young couples, priced out of housing in the capital. Others were families yearning for more space and privacy, and willing to sacrifice the chaotic commuting lifestyle. Foreign nationals also followed the swathes of people into commuter-belt territory. Planning authorities and politicians, who opened their arms to development, fought to have tax incentives extended to the entire country. The message was clear: Longford was open for business. It meant more money for the local authority, more employment in the construction industry, and a bigger population for shops and businesses. Who could possibly lose?
For people such as Thomas Casey, it's as if the boom passed by, leaving a trail of greater problems in its wake. At his bar in Newtownforbes, which still sells hardware items such as Rawl plugs and wire brushes behind the counter, the mood is mostly sombre. This evening there's a man who's on reduced hours from the local meat-packing plant and is looking for more work. There is a father of two who was commuting to Dublin up to last week - before he lost his job.
Casey, 52, says areas such as Newtownforbes were supposed to benefit from the boom and enjoy a bold new era of prosperity. New houses began to arrive less than a decade ago, more than doubling the population and altering the character of the historic village forever. Yet many of the new arrivals are commuters, travelling long distances to work early in the mornings and arriving back bleary-eyed late in the evening. Casey also says that others are on rent allowance and tend to not mix with the community.
"As I see it, the boom was good for some, but not for the rest," he says. "I think village life has been destroyed. People were content to make vast fortunes by selling land and squeezing as many houses in as possible. Now, lots of them are empty and there's no demand. I don't know what's going to happen to them. I don't know who's living here any more.
"They've done nothing to enhance the area. The density of a lot of them isn't right," he adds. "But the big problem is the infrastructure; the sewerage system, which is running at full capacity, needs to be upgraded. I've seen raw sewage going into the water."
The sense of gloom extends to Longford town, where shops already have "sale" signs in the windows in the run-up to Christmas. As if the lack of consumer confidence isn't enough to cope with, it is being hit badly by the cheaper prices in the North.
"It's just an hour to Enniskillen in the car," says a grim Roy Davis, the owner of a local Supervalu and chairman of the traders' association. "It's impacting on everyone. This is new territory for all of us. You used to be able to plan and say, 'well, we'll at least do as well as last year'. But not any more." While supermarkets have lost 20 per cent or more in trade, boutiques and clothes shops are faring even worse. The town is desperately trying to lure shoppers to stay at home with eye-catching initiatives, such as free off-street parking. But it feels like a losing battle. The sight of bright orange Sainsbury's plastic bags being loaded out of car boots is increasingly common.
"It's back to basics for most people," says Charlie Kiernan of Centra in Drumlish, a 15-minute drive outside the town. He is also feeling the pinch from the North. "It's hard to compete with those prices. I'm selling much more things like mince. The days of splashing out on the luxuries are over." Inevitably, like most parts of the country, job losses have hit the area hard. Unemployment is up by about 50 per cent over the past year. The shockwaves felt initially in construction have spread, widening to manufacturing, retail and financial services.
Seamus Butler, whose company Butler Manufacturing Services makes waste-water treatment products, had 40 employees last year. He says his decision to let 12 go recently was one of the most difficult of his career. "It's easily the toughest aspect of all of this," he says. "It's the human side of it all. You see them working, supporting families, it's a decision you can't take lightly. You hope they'll be re-employed or find something. In our case, it's been last in, first out. That means it's mainly been foreign nationals being let go." There are also signs that many of the Poles and central and eastern Europeans who flocked to towns such as Longford are leaving, or at least tightening their belts. At the Net Café on New Street, Alan Brierton has seen numbers using the internet or wiring money using Western Union dwindle over the past few months. Business is down around 50 per cent, he says, and opening hours have been reduced as a result. The lease on the premises is up in a few months' time and he's not sure if the business will keep going.
Kamil Markowski, 28, from outside Warsaw in Poland, thinks many of his compatriots will tough it out as there are still more opportunities around compared with home. "Some are leaving, but I am happy to stay. I can still earn much more than home, while those without work can still get good money." It's not just foreign nationals leaving. The spectre of emigration among young Irish is rearing its head for the first time in a decade. Mostly, the stories are of young men in construction heading to Australia for a year or two, or trying their luck in the UK, US or Canada. Cashel GAA club, which won the county's intermediate football championship in September, has lost about four of its squad to emigration.
"They're mostly gone to places like Australia," says Cllr Sean Farrell of Newtown Cashel. "I'm old enough to remember the emigration from here in the 1980s; to see it returning again, and to see the extent of it, is quite a shock."
QUITE APART FROM the downturn, there is also the gnawing feeling that the boom was squandered particularly badly here. The empty houses, shops and retail parks are daily reminders of the giddy rush to development. Yet, there is little sign of recrimination. The headlong rush to build, fuelled by generous tax incentives, was supported by everyone in authority: the politicians, the planners, the developers.
To borrow the phrase used by journalist and commentator John Healy to describe the death of an Irish village in the 1960s, no one shouted stop.
There were a handful of discordant voices. Parvez Butt, a Green Party candidate in the local elections, says the rampant overdevelopment of the country was obvious to anyone a few years ago.
"The census in 2006 showed that 23 per cent of houses were empty even then. That's a very high figure in a county without many holiday homes," he says. "The problem was that the tax concessions kept the demand going, people were trying to cash in on the boom, which is why we now have this legacy of ghost-town developments. It was a major error of judgment, but not a single elected representative spoke up." Longford's mayor insists that the only people who were irresponsible were the banks, for indiscriminately lending so much money.
"They were the ones giving 100 per cent mortgages, that's how it all happened so fast. We didn't go zoning extra land; the residential land was available anyway and was zoned for a number of years," says Cllr Sean Farrell.
Another unsettling question is what will become of these empty estates, in a market which many predict may not pick up for a number of years. Already, some developments are aging and visibly beginning to deteriorate. Frank Kilbride, who was involved in developing the 12 houses at McArt Meadows, says he hopes to finish off as many of the house as possible next year. "We sold two houses about a year ago, but since then nothing is moving," he says. "They were on the market at €255,000, but now I'd take an offer of €150,000 if it came."
Over at Battery Court, the scheme's developer says he's hopeful the houses will be completed in early 2010, almost three years later than originally anticipated. But even that prediction depends on the level of activity next year.
"We've sold or taken deposits on around 40 per cent of the units," says Joe McGrealy of McGrealy Developments. "A lot depends on the quality of the product and the location, so we're very fortunate in that regard. All we can do is keep the head down, keep working and hopefully get to the other side."
Longford's mayor, meanwhile, insists the area will be able to bounce back, even if there is little sign of a recovery on the horizon, "I agree that in the short-term it might be hard to see things improving. But there is a resilience here, and we're going to do everything to make sure that money is spent in the town and we keep things going. "Yes, we have more houses, but we have people on waiting lists and we have big employers here like Abbott. This all happened very quickly, so there's no reason we can't recover as quickly again."
