This article is part of Ireland’s Changing Suburbs, an Irish Times series exploring our fast-growing new towns, changing older neighbourhoods and shrinking rural landscapes. See also: ‘the commodification of Crumlin’, the urbanisation of Glanmire, the densification of Dundrum and the ‘Dubification’ of Navan.
Hemerson Ramos and his partner bought their home in Balbriggan’s Taylor Hill estate in 2018 after renting in Dublin for nine years.
“When we first moved out here, the commute was absolutely shocking,” says Ramos. “We asked ourselves, ‘what have we done?’.”
The couple wanted to continue living in Dublin and this was the only place they could afford.
RM Block
“We hadn’t even heard of Balbriggan,” he says. “But, once six months and the shock had passed, we just ended up seeing the positives of this move.”
He loves the “sense of community”, noting a difference between their neighbours now and those they lived next to in their former home near Croke Park.
“We didn’t know our next-door neighbours. Here, everyone is saying ‘hi’ on the streets. We meet on Saturdays to work in the Tidy Towns group. It is so welcoming,” says Ramos.
Originally from Brazil, he is a founding member of the Taylor Hill residents association. According to a survey the association carried out in 2022, there are 51 different nationalities living in the estate. This is emblematic of the town’s transformation.
It would be hard to find a more changed place in Ireland than Balbriggan. Between 1991 and 2022, the population here more than doubled, significantly outstripping the national average.
About 30 per cent of the people recorded as living here in the 2022 census were born outside the State. Balbriggan is also the “youngest town in Ireland”, with almost a third of residents under 18.
“Balbriggan has gone from a sleepy dormitory town on the edge of Dublin to one of close to 30,000 people,” says Independent councillor Tony Murphy.
Murphy opened a jewellery business in the town in 1983 when the population was closer to 6,000. He has seen it go through “a number of chapters”.
In the 2000s, cheap land around the town drew in developers, he says. With housing developments springing up, large numbers of Polish people moved in to service the construction industry.
In addition, the direct provision accommodation centre at the old Mosney site in nearby Julianstown saw “a natural movement of people into the town who were qualifying for asylum”, according to Murphy.
He added: “It was two or three years before there was overall acceptance of this change, because it was very fast. I’d say we are a good example of integration right now. We have so many nationalities and I’d say there is good harmony because everyone is working.”
This was not necessarily the case around the time of the economic crash, he recalls. Social tensions became heightened due to financial strains and cultural “misunderstandings”, he says.
[ Ireland’s Changing Suburbs: ‘Glanmire was a village when I moved here’Opens in new window ]
“We have really good diversity groups set up now. The gardaí and different ethnic minority groups sit and discuss different issues. People are talking and expressing concerns before they can escalate.”
Second-generation immigrants are coming of age in Balbriggan.
A woman in her 20s is enjoying a conversation with a friend in a cafe opposite the local courthouse. “I saw my babushka yesterday,” she says.
The conversation is conducted, at times, in what sounds like eastern European accents. Suddenly, however, these same voices can sound like those heard along the Dart line in south county Dublin.
[ Ireland’s Changing Suburbs: The ‘Dubification’ of Navan, Co MeathOpens in new window ]
One of the first migrant communities to really establish a presence in the town was the Polish.
Malgorzata Orlowska-Smith is head of the Polish Scouting Association of Ireland and runs the local Polish Scouts group in Balbriggan. “We have 120 members in the local troop alone,” she says.
“We organise a lot of events. On Polish independence day we had a Mass, then we marched down through the park to a local hotel where we had an event of singing and dancing with the Polish folk dance group.”
Having moved to Balbriggan in 2007, Orlowska-Smith now also runs three local preschools, all of which represent the diversity of the area’s population.
“I counted in one class of 24 children 22 different nationalities,” she says. “I employ 30 people and they are from all over the world as well – India, Pakistan, Africa, Poland, the Czech Republic, a few Irish too.
“Because of the cultural differences there are big challenges when celebrating holidays, even Halloween. We are trying to be very inclusive and ensure all nationalities are represented. Our staff being so diverse helps us understand it a bit more.”
Orlowska-Smith speaks warmly about life in the town. She says she has never been made to feel like an outsider, but adds there are problems.
“Balbriggan in general is a lovely place to live, but I don’t think it was ready for this amount of people to move in. I know there is a problem with doctors; there are not enough of them. There is a huge problem with traffic. Public transport is not really great. The train and the buses are crowded.
“I’m getting a lot of phone calls from parents saying they are late because their bus is not running on time.”
She says there is a lack of activities for teenagers. “There are no youth facilities. We have playgrounds, an outdoor gym and football pitches, but our teenagers have nowhere to hang out and that can cause trouble. Especially on rainy days, it’s really difficult to organise time for them.”
Balbriggan has grown due to internal migration as well.
“Balbriggan was not on our radar at all,” says Niall Sheil, who moved there with his partner Victoria in 2021. He was born and raised in Tallaght, Dublin, and went on to rent in Maynooth, Co Kildare.
Affordability first drew them to the north Dublin town, but they were also attracted by its diversity. Sheil’s partner is from Malmo, Sweden, and is of African heritage.
“We wanted to bring up our son in an environment where people of different backgrounds were already coexisting and living together,” Sheil says.
He says this diversity is most evident at his son’s soccer club, Balbriggan FC, where young people of different ethnicities mix well. His partner takes their boy to his GAA training sessions at O’Dwyers GAA club and “is made to feel very welcome there”.
A PhD candidate at Maynooth University, Sheil is researching the demographics of Balbriggan with a focus on immigrant integration. In his experience, he says, there is very little racial tension, but, like Orlowska-Smith, he identifies a concern in the community about the activities of some teenagers.
“A very small minority of people are concerned about antisocial behaviour among teenagers . . . This is not linked to race or ethnicity but rather a lack of third spaces for the teenagers to congregate.”
Sheil says while people who grew up in Ireland are perhaps more accustomed to seeing teenagers on the main street at night, it can be a culture shock for newly-arrived migrants, particularly those from China and India.
“When people talk to me about antisocial behaviour it is perhaps different to what I experienced growing up in Tallaght in the 1980s and ‘90s,” he says. “There isn’t really a nefarious element to the ‘antisocial’ behaviour here, it is just teenagers trying to form their social identities.”
Despite the influx of new residents, the economic benefits for the town can sometimes be hard to identify. Sheil is having a coffee on the upper floor of the Millfield Shopping Centre overlooking new housing developments. Tesco is the anchor tenant, but there are plenty of empty units. He notes several closed down during the pandemic.
The main street, like many others, has lost traditional retail outlets. While there is still a locksmith, there is the increasingly typical modern street scene of mobile phone repair shops, barbers, vape stores and bookmakers. There are a smattering of “To Let” signs as well.
Ramos suggests this is down to weak footfall because so many people leave “first thing in the morning to make money and don’t get home until late at night”.
“I have neighbours who are commuting up the M1 to Northern Ireland to work as doctors and nurses, some who are heading off to work in Intel in Leixlip, and [there are] people like me catching the Dart to work in places like Dún Laoghaire.”
He says public infrastructure is “saturated”.
“If you are living in Skerries, you have no chance of getting a seat on the train to Dublin in the morning. In Balbriggan, it is touch and go.”
The lack of larger local employers is a worry for some in the town.
While Fyffes opened a new ripening centre in 2022, Murphy says only a handful of companies have more than 50 people working for them.
“We are sitting on the Dublin-Belfast economic corridor,” says the councillor. “We should be attracting more foreign investment and bigger employers.”
Housing demand outstrips local supply too. Prospective buyers are awaiting the completion of 817 units on the Land Development Agency’s Hampton Demesne site and new estates under construction by Glenveagh.
Murphy is confident, however, that many of the missteps made in Balbriggan’s initial rapid expansion will not be repeated.
“During the housing boom there was no money to build out the infrastructure that was needed,” he says. “With most of those developments today, the planning applications are forcing the developers to deliver the crèches and identify lands for schools. Infrastructure is going in tandem with the housing.”
These are signs, he believes, that “we have learned some major lessons with what happened before”.
