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. Elsewhere in the series, Fintan O’Toole writes about ‘the commodification of Crumlin’, Rosita Boland about the urbanisation of Glanmire and Niamh Towey about the densification of Dundrum.
“I used to work in China Garden and when we used to hand out deliveries for Johnstown, we’d say ‘you’re going to Little Dublin’. That’s 20 years ago now.”
Mags Carney is an afterschool worker in Johnstown, on the outskirts of Navan, Co Meath.
Originally from Lucan in Dublin, she moved to the town years ago with her husband, who is from Navan.
RM Block
“There’s a lot of Dubs in Johnstown,” she says.
The population in Navan has exploded over the past two decades, rising from 11,000 in the 1991 census to more than 30,000 in the 2022 census.
Much of that population growth has happened in Johnstown, which on its own has a population of about 12,000.
Once a small village on the outskirts of Navan, it has transformed from largely empty fields pre-2000 to a sprawl of almost 20 housing estates now.
The area sits on the M3 motorway, which opened in 2010 and provides direct access to Dublin’s city centre in about 50 minutes with no traffic.
This, combined with lower house prices, made it an attractive area for first-time buyers from Dublin who could not afford to stay in the city.
One woman we meet outside the local national school in Johnstown exemplifies this trend.
“I’ve been here for about 10 years. We moved because the rent was too high in Swords and we needed to save money to buy a house,” says Ola Hij.
However, while Johnstown has provided affordable homes for people like Hij, there are few amenities in the area – no playground, no community centre and a scarcity of childcare.
“There are no playgrounds in Johnstown at all and we only have one bus into town that comes about every 20 minutes. We have a Supervalu and the school is close by, but that’s it,” Hij says.
Navan is one of the largest urban areas in the State without a public rail service. A train line connecting Navan to Dublin has been promised for many years, but latest predictions say it is not due to be completed until 2036.
This means most commuters there are stuck on unreliable bus services, facing high volumes of traffic in their cars, or having to drive to the M3 Parkway station in Dunboyne to get a train to the city.
“Half of Navan is made up of Dubs who came out here for affordable housing,” says Emer Tóibín, Aontú councillor for Navan. “When they bought their houses 20 years ago, it was on the brochure that there would be a rail line to Dublin.
“The bus service is very unreliable; I’d say we could do with another two [buses] at peak times in the morning and evening. There’s definitely more demand for bus services than the NTA (National Transport Authority) is willing to fund.
“More people leave Meath for work and Navan is the biggest commuter town in the country. So people have an awful time getting to work. It really is difficult. Every year, the early rise is getting earlier and earlier.”
At the M3 Parkway station, we meet Emily O’Brien, originally from Dublin but living in Navan for more than 20 years. She says she would much rather drive to this train station than rely on the bus service from the town.
“I’d rather drive here and know that I’m getting to work on time. Normally if I get this train, I’d be at work before 8am. I got the bus one morning, it was raining and it didn’t get in until 9.20am. So you can’t rely on it,” she says.
Many people we meet in Navan refer to the unreliability of the NX bus service which runs between the town into Johnstown and then on to Dublin city centre.
There is a Facebook page dedicated exclusively to making complaints about it, which range from cancelled services, breakdowns, heavy congestion around the M50 and buses that skip stops at peak hours because they are full.
While the rapid increase in population in the Johnstown area has left bus services struggling to cope, it took much longer for businesses in Navan town to see the increase in footfall that might be expected from such a growth in residents.
“For the first few years we really saw it as a dormitory town,” says Joe Staunton, who owns a pharmacy in Navan town. “People were spending their days in Dublin, working and even socialising in Dublin. You’d never see them in the shops, really, except on a Sunday. Places that would do Sunday breakfast would be quite busy, but I wouldn’t have really noticed the explosion of population.
“Then when Covid came, people formed new habits. People who were living in Johnstown all of a sudden were using our shopping centre in Johnstown village and even here [in Navan town], and those habits have been retained. We found that we’ve maintained the growth that happened in those years.”
The introduction of cycle lanes and the pedestrianisation of some streets in the town has resulted in frequent road works and significant disruption to many businesses in Navan.
The congestion caused by these works sees The Irish Times stuck in traffic for quite some time on the way into the centre; many say this is putting people off shopping in the town.
One retailer who did not wish to be named tells us his footfall is down 40 per cent.
“These cycle lanes are superimposed by decision makers in Dublin who don’t know the streets of Navan, and it’s the sort of politically correct thing to do to put in cycle lanes, even though they’re not needed or wanted or not used currently, so it’s a failed experiment here,” Staunton says.
“What they’d like to see in Navan is a sort of a modern town with cycle lanes, people walking, on buses and so on. But it doesn’t suit a small market town that hasn’t high-density employment with a short link to a high-density residential area. That’s not Navan.”
He believes resources would be better spent providing amenities for the growing number of residents.
“I don’t think the amenities have kept pace with the extra population,” Staunton says. “I think there could be other amenities that would enhance the town as a residential area.
“If you look at the amenity of our rivers, the Boyne and the Blackwater confluence in Navan, and there’s nothing made of it in the town. There’s a ramparts, which was an old barge path for the dray horses, but that walkway is poorly maintained. There’s a great opportunity for a linear park running from Kilcarn Bridge and joining in with the greenway there.”
Having greater opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, with more public park space and playgrounds for children, is certainly sought by those who live there – largely because they spend so much time in their cars.
Áine De Barra is another former Dub who moved to Navan 20 years ago. Her family lives in Blanchardstown, a 30-minute drive away, and she always thought she and her husband would move back.
That is now not possible, so the family spends a lot of time in the car.
“You spend a lot of time driving,” she says. “I know myself and other families, we bought a more comfortable car because you spend so much time in it. You drive everywhere, you drive your kids everywhere,” she says.
Her husband leaves the house at 5.40am to drive to work in Dublin every morning and doesn’t return until 5.30pm.
De Barra used to work in further education in Darndale, but childcare costs meant it wasn’t worth her while going back to work.
She chose to homeschool their four children, partly to avoid them also having to commute to school.
“It’s taken an element of commuting and an element of rush hour out of our lives,” she says.
She refers to “ghost buses” into Dublin that she has waited on and have not shown up. A train line to Navan is badly needed, she adds, to take the pressure off buses and get more people out of their cars.
“You end up spending a huge amount of money on commuting between tolls, car maintenance, diesel. You just end up spending a lot of money getting back to Dublin, because that’s where the work is,” says De Barra.
Aside from better public transport, she says Johnstown needs an increased Garda presence, more doctors, its own swimming pool or community centre and a more regular circular bus to Navan town that would allow people to do their shopping or use the facilities in the town without getting in their cars.
In the meantime, it appears that while the Dubs who moved to Navan may have secured more affordable housing, the promise of a train line, or an easier life in general, may be decades away.
Tóibín says there are lessons in how Johnstown, and Navan in general, was built out and planned.
“It is great to see quite a lot of housing being built, but community infrastructure follows years and years afterwards, to the extent that maybe a couple of generations of children will have fallen through before it arrives. It’s really poor planning and it should never be allowed.”
