Hi Janice
I live in Dun Emer and while initially having reservations about Lusk, I am now coming to like it. The village itself is very higgeldy piggeldy which some might call cute but walking around, especially with a child in a buggy can be difficult as there's quite a few streets with no footpaths etc. Overall the village is very underdeveloped presently considering the population. There is one village shop/post office which is badly laid out and always very busy. There are a couple of nice enough pubs but as yet no restaurants/cafes. Generally we have found people to be very friendly and there is still a country village feel to the place.
There is a new village centre under construction with small supermarket and a couple of smaller units (one of which is going to be a cafe) and I have seen at least one planning application for a restaurant in the village.
As to Dun Emer I would say its a nice enough estate and I like the houses.
However, I will say be very thorough with your snag list, the finish on the houses I thought was very poor, though that seems to be a problem common to all new houses these days.
We've had to have the builder back a few times so if you do buy, test everything that couldnt be checked at the time of snagging, eg all radiators, hot water , plumbing etc, we had a gas fire installed to discover our chimney was blocked.
One drawback of Dun Emer is that you are about 2 miles from the train station (I havent actually measured it but its a good walk I'd say)
Overall though I think DunEmer/Lusk are good value for money , after looking around the general area for a few months I found Skerries very overpriced and dare I say it overrated , it is a lovely village but some of the estates are huge and miles away from the village and the houses I looked at were generally quite small. I think Donabate is really nice but again I think it is very expensive for what you get (especially once you add stamp duty if buying 2nd hand)
Rush has a beautiful beach and is a nice little town albeit quite sprawling, we didnt look at a lot of houses in Rush but they seemed (relatively) good value for money.
I am from the north side of Dublin originally and for me Bettystown Laytown and Balbriggan were just too far out for me and I didnt find that the houses there were that much cheaper to justify a longer commute.
These are all just personal opinions/observations but I hope they are of some help to you.
cheers
Jed