Balbriggan

We are on the affordable housing list for fingal and realise that most if not all of the houses are out in balbriggan area.

Would appreciate information on the area, commute times etc. We live in Donghamede and little fella goes to school in Portmarnock, one of us works in the city and the other near the long mile road.

Would Balbriggan be just to far out? We have to decide whether we could live in an apartment but be near his school or would it be too squishy (we have 2 kids).

Would it be possible to commute from balbriggan to Portmarnock for school or it that just silly. Are there schools out in Balbriggan.

Sorry i have no knowledge of the area at all.

Thanks

i just started work there recently..and i love the place.!
a real nice vibe. mix of old and new. lovely people. defo one for the future. i would highly recommend it.! good luck!

Am living in Balbriggan for the past number of years - originally from Malahide.

When I moved first, I was still working in Malahide so commuted every day. Max of 20 mins on the diesel train & many people do it, and with children. I know of a couple of kids from the area who travel to Malahide for the secondary school no bother at all. Of course there are schools in Balbriggan, we're not out on the sticks but there is a strong demand for school places so you might want to check out availability with St Peter & Pauls, St Molaga's, Educate Together, Gaelscoil & the others.

I work in the city, commute can be tough as i'm on the far southside, but in saying that it's 50 mins by rail from pearse to Balbriggan station which is far superior to the journey by car.
Amenities wise, we've just got a new Dunnes Stores - about the same size as the one in Portmarnock, also a new 5 screen cinema, sorry the mind boggles when i'm put on the spot!

We have our own website - www.balbriggan.net which is great for keeping up to date with the town and if you're looking for some pictures. Just click into the news section. Great mix of people, and we're happy out.

I'd never move back to Malahide too!

If you search for 'Balbriggan' you will find the town is dicussed in many existing threads.

Thankfully there's also a few restaurants now. There's a lovely Indian and an Italian beside that (only opened in the last few weeks) and there's another lovely new Italian beside the cinema. Now it just needs a few decent pubs.

There is also quite a large discussion on boards.ie re:Balbriggan.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054847397

The traffic in the town in hard to get used to, the schools are over crowded and have lost any character they once had. It's square is a mess and the wonderful sense of community has been worn away by no one giving up time to run youth groups or help the few elderly left.

Balbriggan is a place people now live in because they can't afford to live anywhere else. This is sad as it was a pretty, though gritty place once.

The housiing is uniform and badly built, the estates have no meaning and continue to grow often unlandscaped.

It is a dull functional place to bring up children, it has a notable drug prpblem that say Skerries or Lusk lack.

Space isn't everything. If i were you I would think of location first. If your child has a place in school in Portmarnock don't move them, instead put there education first, changing school is rarely advised unless the child has a big problem. Live somewhere as insulated as you can because when the economy goes down places like Balbriggan will get an unfair amount of antisocial behaviour and the private estates will decay rapidly.

People who can move out of Balbriggan tend to do so, people who have no choice move there and try and make the best of it. You have a choice and therefore should be bearish about the future and stay somewhere as safe and secure as possible, even if it means a small apartment instead of a badly built 3 bed in a miserable cultureless wasteland like Balbriggan.

It got by when it was small, but developers have raped it and it is on its knees now. my advice is stay clear and give the little ones a better chance.

Sorry for being so direct but you want the truth I hope.

Before i forget, the community school in balbriggan is accepting enrollment for the 2007/08 school year next week from 9.30am to 11.30am monday through to friday.

i wouldn't agree with Doris at all. I moved out to balbriggan a year ago - bought in the village itself and i think it's great. The train service is good and only 25 mins to portmarnock. Trains arrive into balbriggan mon-fri about 8.50am and are packed with girls attending loreto balbriggan.

Balbrigggan is only a short drive away from bettystown, donabate, skerries and malahide beaches, as are Ardgillan and Newtown house - all great for kids to run around in. Scotch hall in drogheda is proving very popular and you can also get train to belfast for a change of scenery.

New shops and other amenities are opening up all the time. And the 5 screen cinema only opend last month. Although, a full sized supermarket would be nice - for a weekly food shop, you have to go to the pavilllions in swords.

And did i mention that people who get the train from balbriggan in the morning are greeted by one of the best views in the country?

also Drogheda port is moving down to balbriggan and the National Seal Sanctuary should open soon - expected to become one of the top tourist attractions in the country. This means that property in the area will only increase - as it was undervalued for a long time. Well, not so much undervalued as no-one new was buying there, so prices stayed low for much longer than anywhere else in the country.

Good luck whatever your decision!

Im a balbrigganer all my life, i hate the amount of development that has gone unchecked, but the town isnt that bad!

As a local lad I can tell you it most certainly isnt as terrible as Doris put it? In fact to prove my point I can tell you that we've recently purchased our first home together, in the middle of "legoland"! i.e. balbriggan near dunnes stores, the house is nice, the area is quiet, the roads are hell... but with 5,000 people living on about 5 acres what do you expect!!!! our neighbours are chuffed to have locals living beside them as we know all the things to see and do and the history of the town.

You'll see by my other posts how I believe the town has been destroyed, not necessarily by people moving in but by a lack of action by the town planners and councillers not representing us effectively in disputes with planners and developers.

Hopefully the days of urban sprawl are drawing to a close and the new developments which will inevitably engulf the scenic clonard hill (no doubt with mental prices due to the view over the town) will be better planned and implemented.

Crime is a factor in every town, it has grown exponentially with the population in the town, but i feel safer (not as safe as i used to) in balbriggan than i do in dublin city, blanch, finglas, swords, drogheda and rush/lusk at night. These are some of my opinions, not those of people in the town in general.

The town is nice, I love it, whenever I go away and come back it makes me feel "at home". Aside from the various faults due to the above planning lack of direction and decisions the town has a lot to offer and once all the traffic chaos is sorted out, and people start walking to the shops instead of driving! (a phenomenon I blame on the mentality of city slicker blowins due to the fact that they probably had to drive everywhere when they lived in town!!!!) and the development peters out (they cant develop forever!!) the town will hopefully settle down into a likeable balanced alternative to city living, with a splash of irish country life thrown in for good measure.

I wont have someone sewing the seeds of discord such as the drivel Doris wrote about my hometown. Give it a chance, there are far far worse places to live on this isle, scenic walks on the beach, ardgillan heights, balrothery hills, a balbriggan sense of humour that in its purest, is unrivaled by any other dublin districts, these are some of the small things that matter, that we have to offer newcomers... and remember, in fifty years, you'll still be a blowin

From my experience of the new legoland areas around Balbriggan, they are soulless places inside and out. Forgetting the poorly built characterless homes, the place lacks character, any sense of neighbourliness and is purely commuterland.

The talk here of 50mins train into Pearse. Add onto that the time it takes to get to the train station, the wait, the delays, and the time it takes to get to work from the station, never mind any connecting buses, and it's not something to highlight the area.

I know a few people who moved out there. 1 moved back home within a short period of time and started renting the place, the other have stayed for a longer period (2 years maybe) and have moved on already.

You don't hear any negatives until they've moved on of course!

ANd about the children, I wouldn't want my children to be doing long roundtrips to school every day. I was spoilt though in living beside a school - but that was rough enough!

Also how will the children get from Port. stn to the school? It's a 20-30minute walk. No easy to get well timed buses. From dart.ie the only suitable train would be leaving the Brig at 7.33, arriving Portmarnock at 8.11 (after a connecting train at malahide). Then the child walks or waits for a bus and either way arrives school 15 minutes early. Long and arduous day for anyone, never mind a child.

Yes, everyone stop knocking the place please, if you havent lived there before yourself, then im sorry but your opinion is not really valid. If however you have lived there and found it was a "hole" please do post. This he said she said crap is not a proper argument to be honest. My opinion is skewed positive, but thats only because im there all of my 30 years. (God, im really that old!??)

Fingal County Council are to blame for the way Balbriggan is at the moment Lego Land, They would be getting a percentage of every builder for every house they build towards Sanitation and Water. So they get greedy by giving planning permission for way too many houses and no green areas for kids to play in. Plus they have the neck to let the builders have Management Companies to pay for what. I personally would not feel safe bringing kids up in Lego land as where do they play on the road with the traffic.

I lived there for most of my life, and I find it a shadow of its former self. It is sprawing and souless, the town centre is shabby and lacks any character whatsoever, it is a bizarre affection to refer to Balbriggan as a village, even in my Grandmother's day it was the town.

The schools are poorly served, as indeed are most schools, The Loreto so large now that it is has many problems, but it is still streets ahead of the Tech, where attacks on teachers is not uncommon. The idea of choosing it over a well regarded school like Portmarnock Community College is beyond me.

Criticism is useful and I would love to be talking Balbriggan up, as many here are, but i don't have the material to work with, it was a culture that avoided criticism that let Ray Burke and the developers get away with so much. Balbriggan will soon link with Skerries through the extention of estates and a nasty sprawl will result. If you really have to move there Move to the Balrothery end, the primary school is the best and the estates are nicer there.

Give me Visionradio over Dunnes Stores anyday, and not a multiplex but the old cinema - though we gave out about it at the time - it least had charm and was nicely purpose-designed.

Balbriggan Today lacks charm and meaning and is a functional place people use.

although i don't agree completely with Doris, i do think the 'new' area of balbriggan is a ghetto waiting to happen, give it 2 years at the most...there are strong signs of it already.

sure, it'll never change, as residents will never stand up to the county council planners, so the planners can do what they want.

so no point in moaning about it.

Just a general query, but all the talk of Balbriggan turning into a ghetto due to all the development, and the legoland estates, could this not be said of ANY town in any county in Irleand at this stage?

I live in Dublin but I'm from the West, even down there, the place is a mess!
Everywhere you drive nowadays be it Dublin or in the country, there seem to be estate after estate being built, houses and appartments flying up all over the place!
Is Balbriggan REALLY that much worse than everywhere else?

I've no vested interest I don't live there and don't intend on living there, I'm just curious?

no-one is comparing Balbriggan to anywhere else. We're just stating the way it is and the fact that we don't like it...

Fair enough I was just curious ! Reading the posts and not knowing the area the comments seemed to me as if they could be applied to pretty must anywhere so I was wondering was it that much different?

Doris said:

Balbriggan will soon link with Skerries through the extention of estates and a nasty sprawl will result.

Click to expand...

Can you point me in the direction where Ardgillan has been zoned to be redeveloped, many thanks.

Doris said:

but it is still streets ahead of the Tech, where attacks on teachers is not uncommon.

Click to expand...

Thats a serious claim your making there.

to all the people who live in Balbriggan and who don't like it. why don't you just leave? Or can't you? You probably can't leave because you can't afford anywhere else. In that case you now understand why there are lots of other people living beside you. It's relatively affordable. If you don't want to live with other people then move back home to your parents... or earn more money and go somewhere else.

I don't have personal experience with the location but a colleague who was born and bred there has a house which she could not afford elsewhere yet seemingly resents the no. of houses being built there.

However just looking at the number of views under a thread which has just the heading 'Balbriggan' on a consumer awareness financial website probably says it all.