Martha Gilheaney (41) recently swapped her six-minute commute to work in Dublin city centre for a six-hour commute from her home in Leitrim because she felt it was impossible to buy her own place in the capital in the housing crisis.
Gilheaney left Leitrim aged 19 to go to college and spent most of those 20 years living in Dublin.
Over that time she moved around “a lot”, she says, describing a pretty typical experience in the life of a renter in Dublin.
“I lived in some awful places throughout the years – run down, really expensive, lots of odd roommates, no security in relation to how long I’d be able to stay there.
“The last place I had was on O’Connell Street, and it was definitely the best,” she says.
There, she paid €1,100 a month for a one-bed apartment, which was just a three-minute walk to work at CCT College on Westmoreland Street wh
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