My daughter and her husband recently bought a house in Co Kildare. It’s a lovely new estate and after two years of searching they are delighted to be out of the rental market and with a home of their own. Indeed, their mortgage is only marginally ahead of what they had been paying in rent.

Originally they had been looking for an older house in a more established community, but when it came to that style of house, there was next to nothing on the market. Whatever did appear required major refurbishment and updating, so they opted for the new build instead.

The new housing estates built on the edges of commuter towns get very bad press. They are portrayed as being empty all day, with doors closed all evening. There’s no sense of community as residents continue to look to their home counties as home.

Initially Hazel was worried that they’d know nobody and that it would take them ages to settle in. Thankfully, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

The estate is full of young couples who are determined to make their new homes into a real community. There’s a WhatsApp group for the women and another for the men, there’s a community text alert, group nights out, a book club, sports clubs and a barbecue for the newbies. And that’s what they’ve discovered in just a few weeks.

Seeing the way these young couples have reached out to each other to help create a new community gives me great hope for the future. It would be so much easier to keep their front doors closed, to concentrate on getting children to school, going to work and catching up with family in the evenings. But doing that is not enough – not enough if you want your children to grow up somewhere that’s a great place in which to live.

Many of us living in rural Ireland take our communities for granted. We don’t realise the work that generations of people have done to foster community spirit. It could be the redevelopment of a community hall, involvement in the GAA or the setting up of a mother-and-baby group.

I’m convinced that some people are inclined to think all the threads of a successful community are knitted together, as if by magic, by a bunch of invisible fairies and that they will always be there to do the work. Not so.

Over the past two years, we have been running the It Takes a Village series, which highlights great communities and the people who put in the work to make them great places in which to live. And it takes people and lots of hard work to do it.

I find it very heartening that community spirit is alive and well in Hazel’s new estate. That there are enough young people willing to get involved to make their new homes not just good places in which to live, but that their community will also be a great place to rear a family and build a future.

Finally, in case you missed it, this year’s Women & Agriculture Conference takes place on 26 October in Mount Wolseley Hotel ,just outside Tullow in Co Carlow. Tickets go on sale on 19 September. CL