The mobile at Brittas Bay was once the 'must have' holiday home of the south Dublin set, but are cheap properties abroad and tax incentives in the west luring the chattering classes elsewhere? Tim O'Brien reports

On a sunny day there is nowhere nicer than Brittas Bay. Generations of Dubliners flocked to the golden sands of Brittas Bay and beaches of the south-east coast for day trips and summer holidays.

Children still play happily on the beach all day long while parents relax, picnic and read the papers in the dunes. Indeed, for a few weeks each summer the bungalows along the coast road could be the Hamptons on Long Island. Days are long and sunny, children go home tired and healthy-looking and it is all only a little more than an hour's drive from south Dublin.

Since the 1970s those who could afford it were able to buy into the country club lifestyle through developments like Ballincarrig on a promontory opposite McDaniels pub, Jack's Hole or Rockfield.

Mobile homes - never, ever call them caravans - acquired decking, double glazing and parks became "gated enclosures". To live the dream as articulated by Wicklow estate agent Sonia O'Gorman of Sherry Fitzgerald O'Gorman, the family decamp to Brittas Bay at the start of the school holidays, sometimes spending all summer on the beach.

The somewhat sexist vision as articulated by Sonia is that mother remains in the mobile during the week while father commutes to Dublin to work. Children, secure in their gated community, play on the strand overlooked by the mobiles where mothers socialise happily on their decks. A relaxing gin and tonic in the cool of an evening and visits to Wicklow Town for supplies, blow dries, and facials complete the picture.

Who wouldn't want their children to spend their summers in such idyllic circumstances? Particularly if your children are rubbing shoulders with the sons and daughters of captains of industry, whose names can be dropped on any occasion.

Articles written about Brittas Bay and its resorts lovingly drop the names of the famous who have holiday homes there; Maurice Pratt, solicitor Noel Smyth, financier Dermot Desmond; investor Pascal Taggart, even the Fitzpatrick hotel family had homes there - the Fitzpatricks own Jack's Hole Beach.

Sometimes whole groups of friends bought mobiles together in the parks. But something appears to have gone wrong in paradise: suddenly, for sale signs are visible in the windows of a lot of mobiles along the Brittas Bay coastline and waiting lists are now frequently waiting lists to get out.

One reason may be that, in Ireland, the country club lifestyle is pretty much dependent on the weather and sometimes those who bought into the dream found themselves looking out of a caravan window in the rain, and frequently at pools of mud.

One wife and mother said she refused point blank when her husband offered to buy a mobile in one of the Brittas Bay resorts. "I would end up minding the children all day at the beach in all weathers while he only came down at the weekends, I was not going to fall for that," she said. "Brittas Bay is not that far away so we can drive down just as easy," she added.

In reality, the prospect of glum-faced children looking out of a "caravan" window at the rain is a worst-case scenario.

What has brought a lot of mobiles to the market in recent years is probably rising costs coupled with the prospect of better value in France, Spain or even in the west of Ireland.

Sonia O'Gorman says most mobile homes are "sold" under a licence agreement. While the "purchase" of the mobile at a resort like Jack's Hole Beach can typically cost anything from about €90,000 up to €250,000 at the rarified end of the scale, annual maintenance costs are rising swiftly.

Some owners who have been there since the beginning, about 12 years ago, were told they would have to buy a new lease to cover the next decade. That could be about €10,000 and more depending on the property.

In addition, the annual maintenance charge recently went up, in some cases from €4,000 per year to €8,000.

"The facilities are good, it is an expensive place to maintain," said Sonia O'Gorman. All the same, €8,000 would take a family of four on a "trip of a lifetime holiday" every year or pay sizable maintenance on a €150,000 property in France or Spain.

Unusually, Mary Graham of the Jack's Hole Beach resort refused to provide details of maintenance charges or even the cost of a mobile. She referred calls to a head office in Dublin which referred calls back to Mary. There is even anecdotal evidence that estate agents are no longer keen on taking Jack's Hole mobiles on their books.

And it looks like the floodgates are opening. The ESRI estimates there are now 40,000 holiday homes in Ireland - up from 15,000 in the early 1990s. At a time when the construction of holiday homes in tax-designated schemes in Ireland is fuelling booming regional economies, it is probably not that surprising that the waiting lists at most mobile home parks have all but disappeared.

In Donegal, Clare and Galway - as well as the upper Shannon resorts - the holiday homes have the benefit on tax incentives. If south Dublin dinner parties are not buzzing with talk of these, the conversation must be profits on investment properties in Budapest or Prague. French sale and leaseback schemes, which offer owners free weeks during the summer, also feature in conversations. Maybe mobiles in Brittas sound increasingly dull to the increasingly affluent Irish. Or perhaps we have just lost the run of ourselves altogether?