Seeking a Better Life for the Children

Rural Resettlement Ireland

Jane Rosegrant

This article was first published in the Autumn 1994 issue (11) of Reforesting Scotland magazine

Have you ever wondered how far community forests can succeed when so many rural communities are dying from a lack of people?

On a small plot of land in County Clare, surrounded by fields and farmers cottages, a caravan is sited. The sign on it reads Rural Resettlement Ireland Limited (RRI). Within this modest headquarters a quiet revolution is occurring - a revolution that holds out the promise of a future to rural communities and new lives to urban families.

RRI is enabling families from inner cities, with a real commitment to rural life, to move to isolated and depopulated areas of Ireland. In a small way they are sowing the seeds of a reversal of the out-migration from rural Ireland that began with the famine. At the moment the numbers who have actually moved are tiny, 135 families into 16 different counties, with by far the largest group settled in County Clare.

These small numbers primarily are due, not to a lack of interest, but to a lack of resources, particularly suitable housing. Since 1990 over 2,500 families have returned completed forms requesting resettlement.

RRI, particularly because of the numbers of families who have responded, has attracted attention in many countries. Journalists, students and interested individuals from all over Europe and North America have flocked to their office to try and understand what is happening.

Most of these people have focused on the human interest side of the families’ stories. However, there are others who understand the political implications of RRI’s work and are musing over the model it may offer to other countries.

In Scotland, despite the many historical and ecological facets it shares with Ireland, RRI has received relatively little attention.

The project is still in its infancy, but its story is one that should be listened to-particularly by anyone interested in what the future may hold for rural areas or for urban dwellers who may feel they want another sort of life.

The Beginning

The initial vision for Rural Resettlement came from Jim Connolly, a sculptor living in a remote area of County Clare. He witnessed the gradual yet seemingly inevitable decline of population taking place around him over twenty years. He knew this trend posed a terrible threat to the community and way of life to which he was committed. As he has stated: Acute levels of rural depopulation are leading to the rapid decline of the quality of life of those still living in rural areas of Ireland....Emigration leads to a declining quality of life for those left behind and those unwilling or unable to leave. Schools, small shops and places of entertainment close. Old houses are boarded up and abandoned. The sense of dereliction is all-visible. (RRI 1993)

He believed that the answer was to enable families from urban areas to relocate in the rural communities which needed new people. Initially, he believed that those people who would be most interested in and suited to such a move would be craft workers and their families, reasoning that they were one of the few groups of people who could earn a living for themselves in these remote areas.

Furthermore, he thought they would benefit from the out-buildings and bit of land that goes with many country houses, as these would provide the workshop space at such a premium in the city.

In 1990, Connolly appeared on a radio talk show and aired his ideas publicly. From that moment on the concept of rural resettlement took on a momentum of its own.. As a result of that one interview, over 100 letters arrived from people expressing an interest in moving. Within a year six families, totalling twelve adults and twenty one children, had relocated to rural areas.

Interestingly, it was not craft workers who responded, but Dubliners, primarily unemployed, who for one reason or another decided they wanted out of the city.

Why Move?

In trying to understand the overwhelming response that project has generated, it is crucial to get to grips with the reasons people have for moving. For the most part they are leaving behind warm, dry, relatively spacious flats, secure long-term tenancies, good service provision and all the people they know.

In return they move into a small cottage with the same number or fewer rooms than their flat, often with damp problems, usually quite cold, generally with higher rents and tenancies only secure for one year-in the early days even less than one year- and often miles from the nearest neighbour, let alone village. Taken at face value, this will not seem like a bargain to most people.

Sceptics immediately assume that the families have purely romantic notions about rural life or that they are running from something in the city, or both. Therefore, they conclude, the relocation will be a failure. Yet records show that over 90 percent of the families have stayed on, and new applications continue to arrive each week, why?

A study conducted in1993 discovered that 72 percent of RRI respondents moved to find a better environment. This response centred around perceptions of physically healthier surroundings for the family, particularly children, and safer surroundings on terms of social pressures (i.e. drugs, crime, etc.).

Twenty percent stated that they moved in order to obtain better education for their children. Only four percent moved for occupational reasons and another 4 percent were looking for better housing (Daly,1993).

One fascinating aspect to these figures is the way they appear to illustrate a basic difference between motivations for rural vs urban migration. Many studies have been conducted on reasons for migration to urban centres, and by far the strongest force identified as contributing to this trend is economic.

By and large it is the search for paid employment that encourages people to move to cities. In contrast, the reasons given by RRI participants for their move are overwhelmingly social (Daly,1993).

Is it simply that life in urban areas is becoming less bearable? Daly’s study found that nearly 70 percent of RRI participants were unemployed in their urban area. Does this then show that people no longer hold out hope of paid employment and some would rather be unemployed in a rural context than an urban one?

Certainly these sentiments would seem to play a part in the motivation for rural migration, but it is simplistic to think they are the only reasons. As critics of the process would imply, they smack of running away rather than taking a positive step toward a different vision of life.

This image of RRI participants as either utopian dreamers or people on the run is firmly denied by the project’s Director, Paul Murphy. As he will tell you, people who are trying to hide from personal problems rarely find themselves comforted by the long winter nights in the west of Ireland. Similarly, those expecting a dreamy rural idyll are in for a shock when the rains and the wind start up in the autumn, particularly if they have not done an adequate job of fixing up their new home. The fact that at least 90 percent of participants stay on and feel that their move was the right choice (Daly,1993), puts the lie to accusations either of flight or rose tinted glasses.

Rather, it seems safer to believe the people themselves who tell us they wanted another way of life for their children, a community where they could grow up safe and valued. For one reason or another, they were prioritising social needs over purely economic ones.

The Communities

Of course, looking at the families who move is only part of the story. The other side of RRI is the effect it is having upon the communities in which the families settle. Do they share Jim Connolly’s goal of regeneration through population increase, or to them do the new people constitute a cultural or economic threat?

Overwhelmingly, the community response has been one of welcome. RRI admits that in the early days there were some misgivings on the part of some communities as to the wisdom of the proposal, but these have largely been put to rest.

Initially there were fears that the new people would take jobs away from long-time locals, and that there might be a great clash of cultures between these incomers and the established community.

Instead, the new people have actually maintained or created local employment opportunities by keeping open post offices and shops and, in one case, increasing the number of teachers in a school.

The social/cultural question is slightly more difficult to address. Some RRI families have reported difficulties integrating into their new communities. Most state that, not surprisingly, the children seem to settle in most quickly, with the adults lagging behind. However, few families complain of long-term isolation and most are full of praise for their new communities.

The successful integration of the families must be credited in part to RRI’s approach to involving local communities in the project. Wherever possible the advantages of new people moving to an area are explained and communities are invited to take on a welcoming role.

In some cases, communities have taken it upon themselves to locate suitable housing for new families and facilitate the moving process. By enabling the communities to take this sort of proactive role, RRI helps to ensure acceptance of the new families while furthering their own basic role - the empowerment of rural communities.

Employment

RRI makes absolutely clear that they are not in the business of providing or seeking employment on behalf of the people who move. Their work is to validate and enable such moves, they cannot take on the extra burden of employment, despite it being an issue of critical importance to rural communities.

What they have done, however, is to act upon their commitment to encouraging rural enterprise by setting up the now separate RRI Crafts. This organisation offers some training in craft work, craft holidays, and holds fairs at which local craft workers can market their work. It is in very early stages of development, but has received enthusiastic support that promises to see its work and influence expanding in the future.

Does It Work

In a small but concrete way RRI has begun to address a dilemma that many of us perceive. Namely, that it is not acceptable for many young people in urban areas to have no future prospects either for employment or for participating in a meaningful community life, when at the same time rural communities are dying from a lack of people. Also, they can already claim credit for some quantifiable successes within communities, such as schools that have remained open.

However, there are many more long-term ways of critiquing their effect that have yet to be addressed. For instance, repopulating the countryside can be viewed as a very pragmatic approach to increasing the political power of rural areas.

It can be argued that political support for rural life, and a valuing of human rural communities as a vital part of our cultural landscape, will only be maintained or created out with narrow agronomic justifications if rural areas support a human population. Whether RRI can ever move the numbers of people needed to create such an effect can only be guessed at.

Others are interested in the potential ecological effects of rural migration. What sort of relationship with the land do the families develop? Do they grow any of their own food, influence local development plans or have more ecologically sound lifestyles than they pursued in the city? What effect will moving have on the ecological consciousness of the children? To-date, no one has addressed these questions, though it is fair to say that these considerations are nowhere explicit as goals of RRI.

What Now?

RRI has forcefully demonstrated that there are many people who will jump at the chance of moving to rural areas. They have also shown that, at the moment, there is an insufficient supply of reasonable housing into which people can move. They have the support of local communities and also of the Housing Corporation in Dublin which has benefited from having Dublin flats opened up to their own long waiting list. Where can they go from here?

They will, of course, continue with their primary task of locating housing and matching it with families on their waiting list. However, they are now also focusing on obtaining the resources to begin renovating existing, dilapidated houses and on building new homes for families.

They are advocating policy changes within government that would support the choice to resettle in rural communities by easing financial burdens on families who take up the challenge.

These new ventures, as well as the attempt to increase the numbers of families re-settled, will be watched eagerly by the many people interested in and committed to rural regeneration. If the promise RRI holds out should blossom- if communities are strengthened and children grow up with a sense of connectedness to their community and the land - it is a vision that may find a warm welcome in many places.

References:

Daly, John. 1993. Into the West: a study of the viability of Rural Resettlement. Thesis for Trinity College, Dublin.

Rural Resettlement Ireland. 1993. Bringing Life Back to rural Ireland: Review of the work of RRI.

Back
Home
Up
Next