Cities are for suckers
Hello everybody and welcome from the fifth best county in Ireland to be a remote worker. Yes, that’s right, Donegal! As someone who has worked from home for nearly 20 years, I’m not completely surprised. Although, when I started, it was still in the days of dial-up modems and not many people actually worked from home at all. Look where we are now.
According to the Central Statistics Office, the number of people working from home in Ireland has increased from just under 20% to 36.2% over the last four years. Over a third of us are now working from home, at least for some part of the week. That’s quite an impressive number.
Virgin Media took on the interesting challenge of trying to rank the best counties in Ireland for working from home based on several factors. These included rent prices, broadband speed, crime rates, air quality, sunlight hours, restaurant availability, and the number of primary schools. According to Virgin Media, “these factors play a crucial role in determining the ideal location for remote work living”.
While Donegal did well to make it to fifth place, top of the pile was Kerry, followed by Clare, Laois and Roscommon. Worst performing, according to the Virgin Media criteria, were Dublin, Cork, Galway, Sligo and Limerick.
Kerry was praised for its lower rent prices (half of those in Dublin), fast broadband, air quality, choice of restaurants, pubs and cafes and its selection of primary schools. Dublin, Galway and Cork performed poorly because of their living expenses and higher crime levels. Sligo and Limerick suffered from air quality issues and lower availability of restaurants and entertainment.
I’m intrigued that transport doesn’t seem to have been raised as an issue. For example, I imagine that if you’re working from home in the city, it can be easier to get about using public transport than in counties like Donegal where people have to rely much more on private cars. The only public transport option here is the bus and I say the bus because, for some places, there pretty much is only the one.
Nevertheless, the cost you bear to live somewhere is an important consideration when it comes to working from home and, in that respect, all five of the top places identified by Virgin Media have a significant advantage over the likes of Dublin, Galway and Cork. According to the most recent Daft.ie Rental Price Report, the average monthly rent in Donegal, for example, is €1,154, compared to a national average of €1,823 – and that’s with an above average increase for Donegal of 20% in 2023. Average rental costs in Kerry are still below the national average at €1,327.
One thing that strikes me is that some people paying above the national average to live somewhere might be grateful for any extra time they could spend in it, even if that was to work. If only to feel that they were getting their money’s worth.
Another factor that wasn’t included but which can be an issue in some counties compared to cities is support. You may remember the saga of the leaning pole of Glenties which resulted in the residents on my road – I won’t say “street’ because that suggests a lot more houses than there are – having no broadband for four weeks. I’ve a hunch that someone living on a city street might get an issue like that fixed far more quickly, if only because of the hazard caused by the pole to a much larger number of cars and pedestrians flowing beneath it.
Nevertheless, the good news is that if so many of us can work from home at least part of the time, it’s clear that a lot more of us could – and we could work there for longer. The technology is there, more or less, so why not?
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