Stepping out of the fast lane - relocating from city to country

Jim Connolly never wanted to start Rural Resettlement Ireland. It came to him like an inspired dream, a chance to save the rural Ireland he loved, while also offering Dublin families a slice of life on the wild Atlantic coast. The problem was that, once he started dreaming, he couldn’t stop, reports Andrew Hamilton

OVER the past two decades, Rural Resettlement Ireland has helped more than 770 Dublin families make a new life for themselves in the countryside. The impact of the Clare-based charity has been immense, offering a new way of life to thousands of young Dublin children, while simultaneously helping to breathe life into rapidly shrinking rural communities and schools.

This summer, RRI has helped three families to settle into small villages in west Clare. Because of those families, and their young children, a teacher will be saved in three small schools this September.

“We started as a charity, as a voluntary organisation, and in the beginning I was working on my own,” says Jim Connolly, who founded RRI in 1990.

“I didn’t want to do it at all to be honest — I thought if I started it that someone else would take on the idea. I drew up a plan to bring people to rural Ireland and I circulated it as widely as I could. Gay Byrne had me on his radio programme one morning and that week we had 100 inquiries — that’s how it really got started.

“Almost before I knew what I was doing, it started working — people started moving. We helped seven families to move in the first year. At that stage, we started looking for funding. We had a long journey looking for funding but the minister who really made the difference for us was Michael Smith. He brought us into the Department of the Environment and we started getting core funding of £10,000 each year. Soon we were able to employ five staff who were running different resettlement projects, and soon the number of people who had resettled was up in the hundreds.

“The Department of the Environment cut funding in 2008 and reduced it to zero in 2012. Now it’s back to myself and Michelle [Jim’s daughter]. Michelle works part-time in the office and I work as a volunteer.

“It really doesn’t make sense. The housing crisis is getting worse and they are cutting all our funding. There is a homeless crisis in Dublin at the moment — there are good families up there living in their cars. Yet down in the West of Ireland we have thousands of empty houses.

“I’m answering the phone every day and speaking to people who are literally homeless and living in a hostel somewhere. These are people who had mortgages until they were evicted. All we are living on now is government spin that everything is doing fine — but the reality that I see is people are living in their cars.”

RRI has become a vital resource for small rural schools desperate for a few extra pupils to keep their gates open. With pupil requirements for a two-teacher school rising in recent years, RRI has been inundated with calls this summer from principals desperately looking to “order” children for the year ahead.

“The rate that [the Government] are closing rural schools is frightening,” says Jim. “They’ll say that they don’t have a policy to close rural schools, but the reality is different. Their policy amounts to the same thing [as closure]. If you’re in a two-teacher school and you fall just one student below the new required numbers, that’s your tough luck, the teacher is gone. That is tantamount to closing the school. It won’t survive as a one-teacher school. There is a policy there to shut down rural Ireland and I will fight it to my dying day.

“Despite the funding cuts, we are resettling families all the time and there isn’t as much adjustment to country life needed as people might think. [A Dublin family] will usually fit in like a hand into a glove. It’s a small country. A lot of the people living in Dublin have ancestors down the country.

“Moving to the country is no bigger a deal than all the country people who move to Dublin every year, and nobody bats an eye at that or wonders how do they manage to fit in. Of course, they fit in.

“Everybody these days is around the same level of modernity. Of course there are going to be differences, we have a beautiful culture in rural areas and that is going to be lost. We have been running it for 24 years now, and if moving to the country was a traumatic thing then we wouldn’t still be going.

“We try to support people [who move to the country] but we don’t patronise them. We don’t call in on families unless they ask and we don’t tell them how to live their lives. We just assist them to make the move and find the location that suits them. In the past we were able to provide more support, but we are down to one voluntary person and one part-time person. Realistically, unless some sort of funding comes in, RRI will fold. Sooner or later, that’s what will happen.

“It seems to me that all over the West a generation has been lost. The spin at the moment that Ireland is pulling out of recession applies only to Dublin and to the east coast.

“I’m not a doom merchant, I’m a very positive person, but as far as I can see it, every rural town in Ireland is as dead as a dodo.”

Michelle Moroney with husband Michael and baby Tadgh. Pic: George Karbus

From dull city streets to surf and tractors

When Michelle Moroney walked into the Finglas branch of Tesco on a dull March evening in 2008, she knew she had had enough. The young mother, with baby Conor in the trolley before her, had seen all there was to see of the city and decided it wasn’t for her.

Six months later, Michelle, husband Michael, and baby Conor were in Clare, preparing to make a new life for themselves in the rural village of Liscannor.

“We were living in Finglas at the time and about a year after Conor was born, I woke up from a haze of breast-feeding and realised that I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep living there,” Michelle says.

“That was back in 2008 and we were living in a two-bedroom apartment. It was a nice apartment but we were paying €1,350 for a place on a main road opposite a Tesco. Every time I walked into Tesco, it etched away a bit of my heart.

“I’d seen what life was like for children in a city, and I decided that wasn’t for me. My husband Michael had family in Clare. He had his first pint in Lahinch and his first kiss there as well, I think, so he had a fondness for the area. He suggested it and I thought ‘it can’t be worse that this [Finglas]’, so we moved down to a stunning, four-bedroom, refurbished cottage in Liscannor for less than half the rent we had been paying.”

Michelle and Michael now operate the Cliffs of Moher Yoga Retreat in Liscannor.

However, they soon realised that just because there was no traffic, it didn’t mean they couldn’t get stuck in a traffic jam. “We used to listen to the radio and we’d hear the traffic reports about back-ups on the N2 exit off the M50, where we used to live, and we’d be there in the car stuck behind some cattle or a man in a tractor,” Michelle says. “We’d always look at each other and smile. We could be stuck in that traffic [in Dublin] for hours, but instead we were [waiting to go] surfing or hiking along the cliffs.

“One of the big advantages about living here is that my kids are not exposed to the same amount of commercialism. There is no stigma about having the best of everything or the newest of everything. We don’t even have a television in our house anymore. The kids are outside playing all summer — my three-year-old surfs.

“But I’d say the country can sometimes feel a little isolating. I have three young kids and my husband so we are very rarely isolated, but I can imagine for a lot of other people it could be different during the winter time, especially with the bad weather and storms. It could be hard.”

A new life

In an effort to cushion the culture shock of moving from Dublin to the country, Rural Resettlement Ireland provides families with a helpful list of things to expect from life outside the Pale.

- Let there be hedge: In urban areas, hedges are seen purely as boundaries and a fence against neighbours. Neatness and security remain supreme. In the country, they are also the living quarters for birds and wildlife so need to be left to grow more freely and cut (or hacked) less frequently.

- Do not fear neighbours bearing milk: Country people are generally far more sociable and friendly. They will wave to you, stop for a chat, even call round when you’re new to the area with some fresh veggies or a pint of milk. Don’t treat this as suspicious behaviour.

- Expect tractors: The countryside is a workplace not a theme park, with industries including farmers, foresters, and miners. So they and all their equipment and vehicles will be present.

- Always tip your cap: When you meet someone on a country path, greet them. If they ever pass your house, give them a wave.

- There will be supermarkets: Despite the convenience of small local shops, many people choose to buy food in larger stores. All towns in Ireland have supermarkets.

- Think health: It is essential that families examine carefully the availability or access to medical services at any new location before they move.

- Small class sizes: Class sizes are generally far smaller in rural schools. Many two-teachers schools would have fewer than 30 pupils.

- Straight home after school: Sports and athletic facilities will vary from school to school. Most children go home on buses immediately after school is over.

- Cheaper pints: Cost of living involves more than food; for example, pub prices are cheaper in rural areas. Car insurance is also cheaper.

- The postman will find you, the binman probably won’t: Postal service is generally the same as the city. Bin collection is not available in many rural areas. People often have to take refuse to the local authority dump. Everybody should do their best to recycle.

Compiled by Andrew Hamilton from information provided on the RRI website