The word is out that provincial properties are a better bet than the capital, which has become too expensive to get a return on the investment. The problem is: how to get out of Dublin. How does one drive or train to a regional location, and keep one's sanity.
Oh, yes, I know you can leave a mainline station and a few hours later arrive in, say, Cork or Limerick or Galway. But then try getting to, say, Croom or Clifden. Trains will not take you to those outposts of growing populations, in spite of local agitation for rail links.
Roads will take you there, providing you have done a military course in map reading and have inner resources of holistic calm. These burgeoning locations offer value to the investor. For instance, about 200-225k will get you a newly-built two/three-bedroom house, with patches of garden front and back and some decent community facilities. In Dublin, a kennel will cost that much, as the dogs in the street know, in this case because of their homelessness.
Provincial rents will about pay your mortgage, while lowering rents in the capital will have you subsidising your tenants, out of your housekeeping money. And so the safari trek to the provinces, by car.
It takes about the same time to get from Dublin to those mentioned cities as 30 years ago - in spite of our much vaunted improvements in "infrastructure" (a term rendered meaningless by political overuse).
Once you set out, you enter a Kafka-esque world of Irish signposting, which by definition is absent, contradictory or confusing.
Miles or kilometres? Directions pointing north or south? Apparently at the whim of the planner or sign erector, depending on the time of day. In spite of official claims of "uniformity" and "conformity" with road usage, I defy anyone but the most studious road user to interpret accurately which signs indicate compulsory, as opposed to recommended, speed limits. In some cases, the old "miles" signs are still there, misleading native and visitor alike.
Ask the National Roads Authority to explain: you will have one of those telephone conversations where you end up gurgling, like the husband in the sitcom: "I don't believe it". I suspect the NRA don't believe it either, but they get off the hook by saying they are responsible only for "primary" routes, and hand you over to county councils which do not understand the logic of signage, for the simple reason, I suspect, there is no logic. Try, for instance, getting from the westerly tip of Cork to Dublin, depending only on road signs and you may end up on a perpetual tour of the Ring of Kerry, before consigning yourself to psychiatric care. Try getting from the village of Doon in Co Limerick to, say, Portumna in Co Galway and you will discover homicidal tendencies in yourself, directed at the next county engineer you encounter on a golf course.
In my more reasonable moments, I used to while away the lost hours by putting it down to the ills of post-colonialism, reasoning that imperial countries knew how to make railways and roads, because they had to move armies to annex and hold territories. Post-colonial countries, on the other hand, never quite knew where they were going and inherited a tradition of signposting the opposite way to confuse the invaders. If you think that theory is far-fetched, try driving from Dundalk in the Republic to Forkhill in Northern Ireland.
Here in the South, we should have left that muddled thinking behind, on the assumption that as a sovereign state, we know where we are going. Well, not outside the Pale, whose local authorities still think of themselves as partially colonised "by them above in Dublin" and are fashionably minimalist about road signs indicating the direction to the state's capital. All very discouraging to outside investors intent on looking at local properties. Which means you have to allow those extra hours to meet the local estate agent, hours spent on some scenic routes which you had not intended. Still, it may be currently less time-consuming than looking at properties abroad. The airport road from Dublin is so badly signposted you find yourself missing the turn-off and end up looking at properties in Balbriggan instead of Budapest.
When you get to the airport, your joys have only begun. From what I hear this week, Dublin Airport is not keen to let people out. Maybe they're making a big profit on coffee sales.
