Irish towns and villages are losing their sense of community spirit and identity. 

That’s according to Muiris O’Cearbhaill from Journal.ie who said the shift away from community began when people started working from home after COVID.

Youth workers have also described difficulties in organising community events due to things like rising insurance costs and a lack of volunteers.

On Lunchtime Live, Mr O’Cearbhaill said his native town of Clonsilla is struggling with its identity.

“People are trying their best there to form some sort of grouping and a sense of identity,” he said.

“That sense of identity is lacking in areas like infrastructure, business and things to do in the town itself.

“For Clonsilla, a lot of people I speak to said there’s not a lot of things there that would attract them to stay there."

'Much of it is gone now'

Eddie D’Arcy, who spent 40 years working in Dublin as a youth worker, said community spirit has waned over time.

“I think the 1980s and 1990s we had a massive surge in summer projects where volunteers got out and ran activities,” he said.

“We had a small community development project supported by the state and we had community workers employed by the HSE and local authority.

“But much of that is gone now for a variety of reasons.”

A block party in Detroit, Michigan. Image: Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo

For Mr D’Arcy, the loss of community events is partly to do with insurance and Government regulations.

“It’s not easy now even to organise a family day for your estate because you’re going to be hit with liability insurance if you want to use such a green space, you have to have health and safety,” he said.

“The days when somewhere set up three or four goalposts and a few bouncy castles, an ice cream van, just to get the community together – it’s disappeared to a large extent.

“There could be a mechanism in place to make it a hell of a lot easier, in other words, insurance run through the local authority.”

Community spirit

Phoenix Women’s Shed secretary Sheila Martin said Ireland has “radically changed” over the decades.

“The sense of community that used to exist, where people left their doors unlocked and neighbours used to pop in for a chat, not even knock on the doors, just walk in, is long gone,” she said.

“There are lots of new housing estates and people don’t know their neighbours.

“You also have much more mobility now and people move away from the towns and villages they grew up in.”

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Main image: A community event in the UK. Image: Colin Underhill / Alamy Stock Photo