Martha Gilheaney (41) recently swapped her six-minute commute to work in Dublin city centre for a six-hour commute from her home in Leitrim because she felt it was impossible to buy her own place in the capital in the housing crisis.
Gilheaney left Leitrim aged 19 to go to college and spent most of those 20 years living in Dublin.
Over that time she moved around “a lot”, she says, describing a pretty typical experience in the life of a renter in Dublin.
“I lived in some awful places throughout the years – run down, really expensive, lots of odd roommates, no security in relation to how long I’d be able to stay there.
RM Block
“The last place I had was on O’Connell Street, and it was definitely the best,” she says.
There, she paid €1,100 a month for a one-bed apartment, which was just a three-minute walk to work at CCT College on Westmoreland Street where she is a business lecturer.
When the time came for her to buy a home of her own, she knew it would be impossible to find anywhere within her budget in Dublin.
“There was no chance of that,” she says, laughing even at the idea of it.
In 2024 she bought a 100-year-old derelict cottage close to where she grew up in Co Leitrim and has moved back in with her mother while renovation works are being carried out.
“I can’t believe I was able to buy [a house] anywhere. I am in utter shock that I got somewhere in Leitrim. I didn’t think it would be possible,” she says.
Gilheaney can work remotely two days per week, meaning she only needs to travel to Dublin three days a week during teaching semesters.
However, this equates to six hours a day on the train on those in-office days.
While she says she is a naturally optimistic person, comments on her TikTok videos, where she documents her commute and the renovation of her cottage, cause her worry about how sustainable the travelling is in the long term.
“People freaked me out saying things like: ‘You’re absolutely mad,’ ‘this is not sustainable,’ ‘you’re wasting your life,’ ‘you’re going to suffer so bad from burnout,’” she says.
“It really got into my head, but there’s no other option for me. My job doesn’t exist here, and there’s no way for me to live where my job is. So it has to be sustainable.”
Gilheaney is one of many workers in rural Ireland travelling long distances to work since the emergence of hybrid working arrangements after the Covid-19 pandemic.
A 2024 study that looked at the commuting habits of workers in seven small towns in Ireland and Northern Ireland found 45 per cent of commuters were travelling distances of 30km or more to work, with over half travelling for 45 minutes or more.
This is double the national average commute time found in the last census.
The research, carried out by the International Centre for Local and Regional Development, found 30 per cent cited housing affordability as a primary reason for moving to these smaller towns.
While the research found the growth in house prices was pushing people to live further away from their place of work, it also found that proximity to family and other social networks was pulling people towards these smaller towns.
Gilheaney prefers to focus on the pull factors that led her back to Leitrim rather than the push factors that forced her out of Dublin.
“I have more space here – there are 5.2 acres with my house and that brings so many possibilities to be able to plant trees and flowers and grow vegetables and have animals. I love that so much,” she says.
“I love being close to my family. It just feels very peaceful here. I get home here, and I just breathe a sigh of relief, because the city seems so chaotic now when I’m there for work, and the contrast feels amazing.
“I probably would never have got that in Dublin, even if Dublin had been a possibility.”
One thing she feels that could make her working week much easier is better train times.
At present she gets the 7.30am train from Leitrim and returns on the 7.30pm train from Dublin, meaning she leaves her house before 7am and does not return home until after 10.30pm.
“I often finish work around 5pm, and then there’s a train at 5.05pm, which is too early for anyone who’s working. The next train is at 7.30pm so I have to wait for an hour to pass,” she says.
“That’s the killer. If I could get a train at 5.30pm that would make all the difference,” she says.
Overall, she is happy with her decision to leave Dublin, despite the difficult commute.
“Obviously, it would be ideal not to have to do this commute. But at the same time, I love my house and I love the amount of outside space I have,” she says.
“I feel like I have my dream house and my dream job – the only issue is getting between the two of them.”
Tomorrow: ‘We just wanted a roof over our heads’: A young couple building a cabin in parents’ garden after months of unsuccessful searching on the private rental market
