Moving to Ireland - lots of questions

[ThatchersCold]

I’ve massively got the fear about what is going to happen in the near future with Brexit in the U.K.

I have Irish heritage (grandparents) and so am going to apply for an Irish passport. My DM has had an Irish passport for about 20 years and she is putting her house on the market and is thinking about moving to Ireland. I am strongly considering moving there too, but am trying to work out if it would be feasible.

I don’t think my dc would be entitled to Irish passports as my DM was not born there, is that right? If so, what kind of rights would they have to live in Ireland, particularly when they become adults?

My eldest dd is disabled which impacts how much I can work, so I would need to claim benefits. I am self employed but don’t earn that much, so currently receive working tax credits, child tax credits, carers allowance, child benefit, housing benefit and my daughter gets DLA. I’ve no idea what my/her entitlement to welfare would be in Ireland. Because of my daughter’s disability I need to be sure I’d be able to make ends meet.

also any other information about the cost of living, healthcare, employment, schools etc would be useful. My DM is planning to move to somewhere around Wexford so would probably be that area. My dc are 8 and 14. I don’t know if this a bonkers idea or whether I could actually do it. Would be a scary thing to do as I actually really like my life here but I’m so worried about what the future holds here, particularly for the dc.

@mathanxiety you speak of Brexit as if Ireland is going to be unaffected. It's going to be a huge problem for Ireland, it's really just as disastrous for us as it is for the UK. There's no escaping Brexit here.
Although I don't agree with your analysis. The NHS is the sacred cow for people in the UK and there's no way any politician would get away with selling it to a USA corporation.

The pp comment about sna access outside Dublin doesn't make any sense as snas -should be- are allocated on an individual basis and location doesn't play a role here.

Ah ok, I thought they were suggesting allocation of snas. I've worked in primaries in and outside Dublin and didn't see this discrepancy but I understand what you mean and how it could come about.

The NHS will be sold off to the highest bidders once Brexit hits because the UK government will not have the money to run it, and there will come a point where printing £ will have to stop. It may well remain British in name, with the same administrative setup - trusts, etc - but it will become like an American HMO for users and it will be owned by healthcare businesses and insurance companies.

While of course Ireland will be affected by Brexit, Ireland is still in the EU and will recover. The UK otoh is in for a hellish time.

SusieQ:
But how do people there on benefits pay taxes? Aren't they just using the public funds?

There are a great many types of benefits, and a variety of people use them as needed. They don't all pay taxes. Some do and can get tax credits, just as some get EIC in the US. Sometimes the money they get in benefits goes into the local economy, which generates tax revenue for the government via income tax, business tax and VAT, and it also generates profit for business owners. The NHS is funded by general taxation and National Insurance contributions.

I am interested to know what you think public funds are for, if not for supporting people who are unemployed or disabled or unable to afford housing or healthcare? Or providing an education system?

Also interested to know where you think the public funds come from....

Martha. Don't some people stay in "council" houses for decades? Whatever. I give up. I can't help but find it weird that someone's first thought on wanting to move is finding out what benefits they are eligible for. But again, I give up. I've got enough to do without debating you about "the dole."

Oops. Math not Martha.

What do you give up, Susie? You asked questions, and you got answers.

Yes, people stay in council housing for decades. They pay rent. They paint the houses, put up wallpaper, grow flowerbeds and vegetable gardens in the front and back yards. They raise families there, and continue to pay rent into their old age. Council estates form stable communities where people know each other's children, where many generations of families know each other and form a community where people look out for each other and support efforts to keep the community safe and promote positive values. The local council estate near where I grew up had a few bad apple families, but so also did my neighbourhood.

Council housing was provided in order to move people out of tenements and slums where nobody had a chance to thrive, disease was rampant, overcrowding contributed to huge problems, and it was felt that this was a shameful thing, something no civilised society should turn a blind eye to. Providing housing was a decision reached by consensus.

People want to find out what the benefits situation is if they have a child with SN or if they have a chronic medical condition, just as people in the US want to find out what the medical insurance is when they seek employment. They may also want to know about entitlement to a state pension in their old age.

In one system the government provides a safety net and in the other employers provide part of the elements of security and society looks down its nose at people who can't fend for themselves, while at the same time being apparently willing to keep the bottom line of massive corporations healthy by making up the shortfall between wages and the actual cost of living that corporations are allowed to get away with.

In both systems (UK and US), the government provides a backup to employers who do not pay enough - in the US, corporations like Walmart pay very little and do not offer health insurance to many workers, meaning that the state subsidises the companies by means of food stamps and Medicaid. In the UK, employers can keep wages low because government will step in and provide various benefits - the only difference here is how extensive the benefits are.

Only someone who has had the relatively privileged experience of never having to count every penny or rely even for a short time for government assistance would be baffled by the idea of people doing their math before making a major decision.

I think SuzieQ you've heard reference to "The Welfare State" and assumed that to mean being "on welfare". It's not. Rather it's a system of government intended to ensure the economic and social welfare or wellbeing of the population via provision of eg education, healthcare, housing and yes, inclues benefits paid to people. It's not "free", it's funded by taxation.

Of course some would argue that it's intended to ensure a population doesn't revolt and seize the wealth and land that is largely in the hands of the privileged few .

It's certainly we'll debated but you can't really debate it when you've fundamentally misunderstood the concept so I'd suggest google is your friend there!

To be fair to the US, whosafraid, the majority of voters voted for Hillary Clinton...

@AnEPleaseBob yes Ireland is still very religious. It's only most younger people under say 35 who are seeing the religion for what it really is and going against it. But the country is still very much religious. Come back to me when every single school is not strictly catholic, there's a church in every neighborhood, you're a weirdo if you're not baptized/make a communion/confirmation

Unfortunately Ireland is still this way. You clearly aren't from here. And all older people are still strictly catholic

The older people in Ireland are not strictly Catholic, a la carte at best. We just passed the abortion referendum, after all. I think the abuse scandals have meant many people have become very disconnected from the church. Cultural Catholicism is very real though - keeps the baptisms/ Communions/ weddings going!

But the country is still very much religious. Come back to me when every single school is not strictly catholic, there's a church in every neighborhood, you're a weirdo if you're not baptized/make a communion/confirmation

That's not 'religious', though. That's an education system that's still run on parish lines, and no political will to dismantle it and replace it with an entirely secular education system, because people still largely go along with what someone up the thread called Bouncy Castle Catholicism communion, confirmation, baptisms, weddings, funerals without attending church or obeying Catholic principles in between, just because 'people do'. In my childhood parish, where my devout (but still voted to legalise gay marriage and abortion) parents still go to Mass daily, the vast majority of the regulars under retirement age are Polish, Filipino and West African. (Admittedly, that's a small band of regulars.)

I was at a wedding in Cavan about ten years ago where the sermon was all 'look at this lovely young couple starting out together in a lovely Catholic home, giving themselves to one another in the eyes of God' etc etc -- and even devout elderly family members were wondering whether the Monsignor would ever ease off beause Deirdre and Eamon had been living together for seven years and had two kids, so it wasn't as though they'd been introduced to the idea of sex for the first time on the pre-marriage course and were Open to Procreation on their wedding night. Which of course the priest knew perfectly well.

There's a lot of lip service. Ireland is deeply culturally Catholic still, in part because of the way in which Catholicism became one of the cornerstones of the way the state, after independence, differentiated itself from England, and because of this, key institutions like schools and hospitals are still in Church control.

I went to convent schools for primary and secondary, and about half my teachers were nuns, and the Heads always -- both schools bear the same name, and are Catholic schools in the sense that almost Irish schools are, but there have been no nuns teaching in them for decades.

Speak for yourselves. It all comes down to the people you know and surround yourself with I suppose. I'm irish and live in Ireland and from my experiences lately I believe this country is still very religious unfortunately.

Of course all state schools in the UK are not secular, far from it. I'm against faith schools being funded by the State and have supported the Humanist Association in their campaign to change this, or at least keep raising the issue

But the country is still very much religious. Come back to me when every single school is not strictly catholic, there's a church in every neighborhood, you're a weirdo if you're not baptized/make a communion/confirmation

Have you got a time machine so we can go back to years ago then? NOT every school is Catholic at all, and those that are have many pupils who are not catholic, and its not a problem at all. There may be a church in every village, but thats true in the UK too (and most places), it doesn't mean anyone actually goes, other than the over 70's. Nobody I know goes to church outside that age bracket.
My kids are not weirdos, thanks, they aren't baptised or do communion, and neither do many of their friends.

I mean come on , have any of you even been to modern Ireland? Those that live here, have you actually looked up in the last 20 years? The picture youse paint of it is not the country I live it, thats for sure.

@AnEPleaseBob are you serious? Not every school is catholic? Lol I live in a city in Ireland and yes 9/10 schools are catholic. The ones that aren't are schools that people claim are for 'hippies' other people's words not mine. Yes in Ireland you are looked at different if you're not baptized, or had your first holy communion. The general response would be 'oh, well why not? What happened?' Rather then, ok that's your choice. If you went to a catholic school as a white person and said you weren't taking part in those ceremonies yes you would be looked at oddly.

I went to a major catholic school with over 900 pupils and in that school there was probably maximum 100 that were not catholic, they were Muslim and of other religions. There was nobody in my class who didn't say our prayers. And this was not long ago.

I agree AnEPleaseBob

I went to a community school that was a former convent school, from 1977 to 1982. When I started out there was one nun teaching and one nun on the board of management. By the time I headed off to college neither of them were there. The school was officially 'multi-denominational' and had a chaplain who could theoretically have been drawn from any organised religion but the chaplains (consecutive appointments) were both Franciscans (RC). There were no formal religious services, no prayers, no religious symbols in the classrooms. The chaplains both performed the role of counselors/social workers more than anything else, and they were very good at that.

There are 67 community schools in Ireland - I am not sure of the religious ethos of these schools, but even though many are named for a saint and were created from amalgamations of voluntary and vocational schools back in the 60s and through the 70s and 80s, I suspect they are as unassociated in any formal sense with any particular religion as mine was way back in the late Jurassic and probably don't have a religious ethos either.

I agree that most RC observance by families with young children is 'bouncy castle' religious observance, but as a product of south Dublin I would argue that this has been the case (minus the actual bouncy castles) for at least 40 years. I would say that about 95% of my classmates never went to any church, and those who did were mainly members of different protestant denominations - Plymouth Brethren and some other fairly fundamentalist sects.

You say you have a disabled daughter - you can apply for Domiciliary Care Allowance (€309/month) and if you work less than 15 hours you can also apply for Carers Allowance (not sure exactly how much that would be but approx €200/week ish).

Child allowance is €140/month per child.

I live in Co Wexford and the schools around are petty good and if you are in/near one of the towns then the public transport is pretty good.

Yes rents are high currently, but compared to Uk purchase prices for houses is much cheaper. Running a car can be expensive (if it's pre 2008 you will pay a hefty premium in car tax and insurance).

The weather in Wexford would be similar to sw England and when you've had a summer like the once we've just had you will truly appreciate the vast number of fab beaches!

I moved to Ireland 15 years ago and certainly don't plant on going back!

Feel free to pm me if you want more info

How can you say that "every school is not catholic" when you've also agreed that 90% of schools are, indeed, catholic? Regardless of whatever people actually do. It doesn't make sense