Is ballycullen a safe area ?

zinaski

Hi all i remember last year in the same time we were moving from cork and i posted asking about areas in north west dublin now we have to move to the south since the company my husband works in is going to relocate in sandyford we want to live in a house and the prices over there is over our budget , my husband wants to live in rathfarnham or knocklyon i found nice houses in ballycullen and firhouse area but my husband not convinced to live D 24
which area is safe with good schools ballycullen ,firhouse , rathfarnham or knocklyon ?
thanks for your time

timberland

hi, i would say ballycullen is a very nice place to live. it is full of clubs and beside very good schools. If you had the money Rathfarnham would be the best though but from what you have said if the house prices in sandyford are too much for you then Rathfarnham would definately be. IMO its rates as follows

Rathfarnham
Knocklyon
Ballycullen
Firhouse

all of the above are great places to live and there isnt much trouble in any of them

yellowtrout

Grew up in D24 myself and can say there will be some bad eggs in all areas.
Firhouse is a lovely area, very quiet but near all the local amenities.
Knocklyon is also nice and quiet. Rathfarnham seems fine too and I know several people from Ballycullen who love it.
Can't really say any of those areas are going to be a bad choice.

HavingCrack

D24 has a population the size of Limerick so to say the whole area is bad is just silly.

Generally it's an east-west divide, the further west you go the worse the area's get. Hence Firhouse/Knocklyon/Ballycullen etc. are good area's to live in, Kingswood etc. still nice but a little further down the pecking order, Fettercairn/Jobstown, pretty bad. However you wouldn't want to be going that far west if your budget can streach to Ballycullen/Firhouse.

Clanket

Knocklyon is Dublin 16, not Dublin 24

seamus

Yep, Ballycullen is perfectly safe. Postcodes aren't really any decent way to gauge safety as D.24 is absolutely huge. It's about the same size as 12, 14 & 16 put together.

Also, "County" Dublin addresses, which are often considered to be upmarket, cover a lot of very dodgy parts of the county.

In terms of Ballycullen specifically, the difference between postal codes is that Ballycullen lies on one side of the Ballycullen Rd and Knocklyon on the other. So there's practically no difference in the areas, ignore the post codes.

As HavingCrack says, a very good rule of thumb for Dublin 24 is that the safety/quality decreases as you move west.
For Knocklyon, Templeogue and Rathfarnham, quality/safety is fairly even across the whole - there are some less desirable estates and some more desirable estates, but on the whole it's a typical friendly and safe middle-middle-class area.
I wouldn't favour Rathfarnham over Knocklyon. You'd be spending a little extra money for nothing.

Luckycharm

Yep Ballycullen is a lovelly safe area, it is the exact borderline between D16 and D24 for example at the top Dalriada is D16 on one side of the road and Hunterswood is D24 on the other side of the road built by the same builders. 100ms up the road at the roadabout it also turns into Rathfarnham
Actually most people who live in Ballycullen are from Rathfarnham or local area and just couldn't afford to buy in Rathfarnham etc at the time.

zinaski

Thanks all for your replies and time , we are now more convinced to live in knocklyon /ballycullen we'll just have to wait untill my son finish his school year then we move during the summer holiday , any recommandations for schools in these 2 areas do you think it will be hard ? because last year when we moved i couldnt get him a place in the most demanded school here although we are in the catchment area .

Clanket

I live in Ballycullen and one of the main problems with it is the schools. Mine haven't reached that age yet but I've been told that Ballycullen is not in the catchment area for St Colmcille's school in Knocklyon which is supposedly one of the best around.

I'm not 100% where they would have to go (Firhouse community?, Ballycragh primary?). You should probably make some enquiries now before the schools close for the summer.

seamus

Aside from Ballycragh and Firhouse, you also have Holy Rosary and Scoil Carmel.

There's a piece of land zoned for a primary school on stocking avenue across from Dalriada, so that will likely be the primary school for Ballycullen if/when it's built.

Educate Together also got approved for a primary school in Firhouse opening September 2013, so fingers crossed that they stick it there (it's about 300m from my house )

Clanket

seamus wrote: »

There's a piece of land zoned for a primary school on stocking avenue across from Dalriada, so that will likely be the primary school for Ballycullen if/when it's built.

Where's that? The land on Stocking Avenue directly opposite Dalriada was zoned for houses last time I looked (a couple of years ago). Has this changed? Or is it further up the road?

seamus

Clanket wrote: »

Where's that? The land on Stocking Avenue directly opposite Dalriada was zoned for houses last time I looked (a couple of years ago). Has this changed? Or is it further up the road?

If you go down Stocking Avenue from the Ballycullen road, you hit a roundabout. Going left takes you into Dalriada. Just after the roundabout, the land on the right is zoned for a primary school. This would have put the school between Dalriada Phase 2 and Stocking Wood. Going right at that roundabout would have brought you into phase 2 on the right and the school on the left.

It was a condition of planning that Ellier would have to put in services for the school (roads, drainage, etc), and Ellier have a couple of times tried to get the council to abandon their plans on the basis of the downturn. Luckily SDCC have left it in the county development plan. I think a school is needed there more than ever tbh.

Luckycharm

seamus wrote: »

If you go down Stocking Avenue from the Ballycullen road, you hit a roundabout. Going left takes you into Dalriada. Just after the roundabout, the land on the right is zoned for a primary school. This would have put the school between Dalriada Phase 2 and Stocking Wood. Going right at that roundabout would have brought you into phase 2 on the right and the school on the left.

It was a condition of planning that Ellier would have to put in services for the school (roads, drainage, etc), and Ellier have a couple of times tried to get the council to abandon their plans on the basis of the downturn. Luckily SDCC have left it in the county development plan. I think a school is needed there more than ever tbh.

Well if you go to the next roundabout you will see the big sign for the all the shops they are building anytime soon So hope this happens a bit quicker then that - schools are an issue though I was lucky enough to get my kids in Colmcilles which is a great school even though I am not in the catchment area.

delta_bravo

Is that development company still going?

I don't know the area too well but took a jog along Oldcourt Road onto Stocking Avenue and the amount of land half fenced with bits of building materials in them must be a bit of an eyesore for locals.

Clanket

As far as I know it is. We had a problem with a leak in our aprtment last year when it rained and they had a crew up with scaffolding withing a week.

Yes it's a bit of an eyesore with all the unfinished building work.

I'll never forgive Ellier for the state of the field they built at the top of Hunterswood. They dumped all their rubbish under it (and I'm talking about heavy duty waste), didn't flatten it properly then just through down a few grass seeds. It's a real greedy thing to do imo

JeremyG

Hi, I read your post. Just for your info Stocking wood has been taken over by receivers recently - that is the remaining houses and apartments. I know that that there will be a new launch very soon in STocking Wood for the summer of 2012 and prices are predicted to be very good value. It would be good to get an apartment / house in this estate as it is in the Rathfarnham area for schools, etc. and the estate is one of the nicest in the area. I have been living here for 3 years so far and can say that it is lovely and the people are too.

JeremyG

Sherry Fitzgerald are managing the new launch.

Clanket

Nice estate but the houses look very pokey to me. They also have very small back gardens that are overlooked by a lot of other houses.

One of those estates built in the boom where the developers literally tried to squeeze as many houses as possible in.

I'd say they'll be launched at some discount to what they were originally asking for.

zinaski

Hi thanks for all of you we found a house in knocklyon and we will move on the first of July after my son finish his school , also i called scoil colmcilles and asked to transfer my son she asked me to fill forms but didn't guarantee that he will get a place , by the way is the primary school divided in to two buildings ?

Clanket

They are building a new school for the kids in Colmcille's this summer and through the next school year. They are planning on moving some kids over towards Sancta Maria. I'm not sure of the exact ins and outs but I'm sure someone else is.

seamus

The Primary school is divided into two buildings - a Junior and a Senior School. Junior is Junior infants up to 2nd class, Senior is 3rd to 6th class.

The current buildings are about 40 years old now and have very limited capacity, so they're being knocked and rebuilt.

What they're doing is moving the Senior school to prefabs on the site of Sancta Maria college about 2km away. A new direct path has been built across some green space in order to facilitate people bringing their kids across. The Senior school will then be knocked and rebuilt, then they move the junior classes in there, knock and rebuild the junior school, and then move all the kids back to the school.

Dunno what the timescales involved are but afaik they're starting the building work this summer.

zinaski

great thats very helpful , so the junior school is in Idrone Avenue right ?

seamus

Yep.

Actually full details of the new school here if you like the nitty-gritty.
http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=144&regref=SD09A/0304

I'm a bit wrong - they're not rebuilding the two buildings, just knocking the existing single-storey junior school and building a larger 3-story building in it's place with 64 classrooms. That's capacity for about 1,900 children. I think the existing pair of buildings can house about 1,200. Which at the time it was built was actually the single largest primary school in Europe.

Once complete, they'll move everyone into the new building and demolish the old senior school, converting it to tarmac playground.

Luckycharm

Have 2 kids in Colmcilles great school bit of a pain the rebuilding as one is in the Junior Infants on Idrone and other in Santa Maria. THink they are supposed to have it all done in 18 months.