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.

“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.

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