Solution Architect/Enterprise Architect, Treasury and Trade Solutions at Citi
County Kildare
One-On-One with Róisín
Could you tell us a bit more about yourself, your job and how long you’ve lived in County Kildare?
I’ve been working in the I.T. industry in Dublin for just under 20 years. I’ve worked in various sectors of the industry, I began as a software developer, and then moved on into consulting. For the last ten years have been in the financial sector, payments, banking Fraud,AML,KYC monitoring etc. I have also worked in production resilience and operations teams. I have had both permanent and contract roles and enjoyed both. I moved to Kildare a couple of years ago, as I own two horses and I keep them in Kildare.
What attracted you to living and working in Kildare ?
My office is based in Dublin, but I work remotely in Kildare. It is a beautiful county, lots of lovely places for walks – parks, canal banks, lakes, along the Liffey. It is accessible with Dublin city centre, so I have the best of both worlds, country and city life.
Can you walk us through a day in the life of living in Kildare ?
On a work from home day, I go for an early walk in Castletown House Parkland. I then work from my home office, and in the evening I drive 15 mins to where my horses are kept and spend some time with them, riding or just caring for them.
How would you describe transport within Kildare ? Is it easy to get around ?
Not particularly, I use my car for getting around Kildare, but for commuting to the city I had to purchase a Vespa a couple of years ago, as the traffic at commuting times is very heavy and commuting to city centre would take approx 1.5 hours. There is a bus service that is also very slow, and a train, which is about 3.5 kms out of the town, but is a good service.
How fast/reliable is your home internet connection ?
The internet is pretty good here, a speed test this morning resulted in 15.9Mbps download,10.4Mbps upload,Latency: 11 ms. It does drop suddenly, quite frequently, which can be stressful when I’m involved in video calls, especially if I am hosting them! Overall, it is reliable enough though.
Can you tell us about some of your favourite locations or attractions within Kildare ?
Castletown House, which is a 5 min walk from my home, is one of my favourites. You can walk along the Liffey there, or through huge woodland. Also a favourite are the canal banks along the Grand Canal, many different walks you can do there. There are some nice pubs along the canal also, eg. McEvoys at Hazelhatch, and Lock 13 in Sallins.
What advice do you have for individuals or families interested in relocating to Kildare ?
It is a great county to live in, it is beautiful and has lots of good places to eat – high quality coffee shops, restaurants and gastro pubs. Plenty of shopping available with Kildare Village outlets, and boutiques in the various towns (Naas, Maynooth..).. and many high street stores can be found around Kildare, e.g. in Newbridge. As mentioned above, lots of beautiful nature to enjoy in Kildare also. If you are planning to work in Dublin city centre and need to be in the office, commuting at rush hour is very challenging and time consuming. Overall it is a really nice place to live and work.
Thank you very much Róisín for taking the time to talk with us and thank you for representing Co. Kildare as a Rural Ireland Tech Advocate. To learn more about Co. Kildare check out our county page here.
Rural Ireland Tech Advocates 