Hello, if you're my neighbour you can google me
Monday August 21 2006
Then it evolved into the present of a bottle of wine to break the ice.
Now new apartment and house dwellers are using their personal computers as a way of meeting their new neighbours. A website has been set up to break down the social barriers between neighbours in new estates and apartment complexes.
The webside - www.neighbours.ie - has allowed members to organise barbecues, pool tournaments and parties, as well as share information about snag lists and building problems.
Its founder, Ciaran Killalea (29), said he had been inspired to set up the site after 15 years of living in apartments.
"The ultimate goal of it is for neighbours to get to know each other. It kills the impersonal factor of living in large developments," he said.
The site allows neighbours to set up their own message board, where they can suggest improvements to their apartment or housing estate and voice concerns about such issues as noisy late-night parties.
Mr Killalea said one of the most interesting message boards was for Adamstown in West Dublin, where 10,000 homes are being built.
"It's a unique one - no one has moved in and yet we've 170 members. Eleanor Parker, who has helped me a lot with the site, runs the message board there and she knows a lot of her neighbours already."
Most of the 1,200 people who have joined up to the site since it was established in March are based in Dublin, but there are also members in Kildare, Westmeath, Meath and Waterford and interest is growing in other parts of the country.
"It wouldn't be unreasonable to think you could have 100,000 members a few years down the road," Mr Killalea said.
The Athlone native, who operates a newsagent's business in Dublin, runs the site on a voluntary not-for-profit basis, but in the long run he is hoping to recover, through advertising, the €10,000 he has spent on software for the site.
On the neighbours.ie site, one resident in the Parkview apartment development in Stepaside in south Dublin complained about proposals to build more council houses in the area.
This prompted another resident to state in reply that others would find his attitude to council tenants offensive and that he was worried about the attitudes of his soon-to-be neighbours.
Mr Killalea said that one or two people had to be banned from the site for offensive postings but that in general the site was regulated by the members themselves.
"The site covers all types of areas. It's good to see people thrashing it out there and discussing it rather than burying it under the carpet," Mr Killalea said.
- Michael Brennan
