To think that life seems better in rep of ireland?

[PunnyOliveTurtle]

ok...hear me out...My DM is Irish and she has not been home in a good few years, I haven't been over since I was 15, I'm early 40's now. So i decided to bring her over to visit her sisters as they are all getting older...late 60s/early 70's.

I had a wonderful time. I caught up with all of my cousins...and here is where I noticed the divide...they all have gorgeous homes and I mean stunning! Some in the country, some in the town, all fab new builds or gutted and updated old houses. A couple in new housing estates which were FAB!!
One of my cousins has just bought a new home...her DH is driving a 2025 car, they are off on hols next week. I asked her if she won the lotto and she laughed saying she wished, savings are now depleted and she was "broke". I know she has no credit cards because she metioned that she didn't have one when we wer talking about booking dinner somewhere and they wanted to take a deposit.

They all have great jobs...a lot of them are teachers...like i was. But they are no where near as stressed as I was. They are on holidays already and have been with a few weeks.Some are nurses but work part time in private hospitals, others work in big pharma companies, banking etc.Their dh's also have great jobs, engineers, managers in tech/pharma, one owns a construction company, one is a farmer.
All and I mean ALL of their DC who are of uni age are in university...no student loans. They have a grant scheme apparently. None of my cousins themselves have student loans...they are in 30's to mid 50's. (Can you tell we had an in depth discussion on uni and fees etc!)
Their DC aged 15+ all have summer jobs...in a local chippy, local cafe, one on a farm etc. My 18 yr old cant get a job at all!!

Everything just seemed so positive there...and im sure its not but I cant put my finger on it...it really got me.
I'm struggling most months...this trip was part on credit card. DD looking to start uni and i dont know how I'm going to help her... I know they say dont compare and I know there must be those struggling in Ireland too but there seemed to be A LOT more money being thrown around.

Sorry, this is going to be a bit of an essay!

I hardly recognise some of these posts. I'm Irish and have always lived here but travelled extensively prior to covid. Yes, parts of the country look like they're rolling in it, but I can't personally see where a lot of this so called investment and cheaper living etc is happening where I live. If I look out my window, sure there are cows and green fields and big houses, but that's where my rose tinted glasses get left behind.

The roads here are shocking. I'm reminded of the formula 1 cars weaving around the track to keep their tyres warm when the safety car comes out every time I have to leave my house. And unless you live in a city, you pretty much all have to drive. Public transport here is rubbish. If I want to go to the town 11 miles from me via public transport I have to go 3 miles to the village nearest me in the opposite direction (walk /cycle /hitchhike!) , get a bus to another larger village/small town 6 miles from there, and then, at long last, get the bus to the town I originally wanted to go to. And then back again!

Food prices must've really shot up in the UK in recent years as my experience was always that it was so much cheaper in the UK. I find food prices here have soared. And, as already mentioned, we have high streets very similar to the UK, but we're paying more not less than in the UK. Makes sense. Why would Tesco sell me my coffee for €5 where you pay 5 pounds. One of my kids is a coeliac. His favourite cereal (like Weetabix but gluten free) is €7 for a box of 24. Last time I checked, it was less than 4 pounds in asda. Since brexit, it can disappear from the supermarkets here for months at a time. And that goes for a lot of foods that we access from the UK.

Eating out is also so expensive now, but there's also not a lot of choice in rural Ireland. We've had restaurants and bars by the truckload close down in the last few years, so rural Ireland in particular is becoming more "dead" by the day.

We have to pay for the GP, A&E, dentist etc. It's €60 where I am to see the GP. €20 for a repeat prescription even if you don't see the gp. There is a definite two tier system in the Healthcare here, where the wait on the public system can take years while those with health insurance are seen in months or even weeks in some cases. But health insurance can be many thousands for a family if you don't get it paid for by your work.

Then schooling is far from free. Every school we've been involved in (2 primary and 2 secondary to date) have requested not-so "voluntary contributions" of €250. Add in the costs of books etc (which I know are being tackled at the moment), but when my eldest started secondary in August 2022, it cost just over 1 grand between books, uniforms, the contributions etc.

I've had to give up work due to my health. Luckily my husband earns a good wage so it's manageable, but not fun. And we're definitely not the worst off out of the people we know.

I would rather pay £50 or £60 to see a GP and pay for A&E than what we have in England now, at least you probably get seen promptly

Yes, and ireland is not the only EU country offering tax breaks, many others have manipulated their taxation systems to suit investment. Other EU Island countries have copied us, which they are entitled to do.

Ireland offered the tax breaks, combined with setting up the required courses and encouraged the development of relevant expertise, offered land to companies to set up manufacturing sites and provided a gateway to the EU with as friendly (low level) regulation as possible. We also speak English, everyone studies a second language in school and we are not big on striking (historically complacent work force, that might change).

If Trump pulls pharmaceuticals out of Ireland, the Irish government own many of the manufacturing plants and lease them to the US companies. There is nothing stopping the gov from setting up a company and continuing to manufacture the older drugs which are no longer subject to a patent (and pouring money into research, inviting US researchers to live here) or to develop new drugs independently.

Yes. And who paid the majority of that? England, France and Germany. Meanwhile each one of those countries is suffering. Maybe that’s why the EU is slowly collapsing. Eventually as more poor countries joined, it didn’t work anymore.

It depends what you want out of life, what your interests are and what job you do. DH is Irish (Cork) and we lived there for 3 years. I previously lived in Dublin for 2 years. Now live in London. Would we go back? No. We are in our 50s with adult children.

DH has 8 nieces and nephews. 3 moved to London and 3 to Dublin because they could not get suitable work in Cork. 2 also studied here because their courses were not available in Ireland.

If you like arts and theatre or work in those sectors there is much more opportunity in London than Cork.

There is also stuff like rubbish being weighed, paying a fair amount for school books etc. DH’s relatives are not poor but not rich either but still pay for the GP. Elderly have to pay if they want good treatment in our experience. Abortion is limited to early in pregnancy. A niece had to come here for a later abortion (severe abnormalities).

Ireland is totally captured by the Trans agenda too.
A lot of people are worried about immigration even if they don’t express it openly.

Yes Ireland is lovely but there is always a down side.

I have to agree with the OP. I’m in Ireland and from a deprived very working class background neither of my parents or their siblings or my parents in law were educated beyond primary school now among my friends and family salaries all well over 100k are commonplace now with people having all sorts of qualifications with several cousins having done Phds and this is all in the space of a generation. People have lovely homes and very good standards of living. A lot on here are taking about Dublin but there are other cities and large towns with better lifestyles and major multinationals. Also the education threads on here always fascinate me especially the obsession with private school. We don’t even have a private primary school in the city where I live and the private secondary isn’t particularly sought after. I’ve just attended an event today at a local (newly built) library with my DC and it was absolutely amazing (and free) and the local libraries will have events on all summer. Obviously not everyone has a flying career and the housing situation can be absolutely awful but anecdotally it does seem that things are a bit better here and the OPs post did remind me of my own family

I had the opposite experience lately as in I live in Ireland and went to the UK and couldn't get over how poor the area I went to was. When I was a kid and we would go to the UK I thought everyone there was rich, it was noticeably wealthier than Ireland. Now where I went in the UK was a pretty deprived place but it was such a shock to see so much poverty. The place was filthy, the park we used to go to as kids was full of rubbish, it was disgusting. The footpaths were a mess, I was with an elderly relative and it was hard for her to walk on them they were in such bad shape. Food banks everywhere. People looked poor, clothes in bits. Nowhere I have been to Ireland even the roughest estates in my city come anywhere close to that area of the UK. It was genuinely shocking. I was so glad that the purpose of my visit was to get my elderly relative the fuck out of there. Like I said it was a deprived area but British deprived and Ireland deprived are so, so far apart.

To be fair, how many places in the world have an arts/theatre scene comparable to London?

Speaking as someone who lives in Dublin, I think Cork is thriving. There are great job opportunities in the pharma and tech sectors. Amazing countryside, food, stuff to do.

I know the housing situation is bad there too, but there are more obvious places to build compared to Dublin, so ot would be easier to fix if anyone in government could get supply moving g properly.

It does cost a fortune to eat out.

I agree unfortunately.

Next available appointment for me to hand over €70 to my GP is July 25. Our healthcare system has been a mess for years and it’s only getting worse with the population increase.

I’ve lived in the UK, now in Dublin. Any time I go back I’m shocked at how much the UK has declined in recent years.
Ireland is not utopia but I’d much rather be here.

I think I might be alone in finding our healthcare not too expensive? GP is €50 but tbh I hardly go, recently when I did have to go to hospital a fair bit they saved my life for free. Dd sees a physio for free. I got my varicose veins done recently, all free and it was only a 2 month wait which I thought was pretty good. Dd had a free mri recently, she was seen in 2 weeks from her appointment with the paediatrician which was free. Dh got a mole removed and tested and then more removed all done very speedily and free.

It might just be the part of the country that I am in but I've really noticed an improvement in healthcare recently, the waiting times for referrals have really gone down and like I said apart from an initial GP fee everything is free after that.

Bin collections are private in the cities too! I pay per lift and a €100 standing charge per year on top.

There’s obviously a squeeze middle in Ireland too, but I find the GP charges and A&E charges are not applicable to everyone. They don’t apply if you’re on a low wage they don’t apply if you have a private health insurance.
I’ve said this about 1 million times on here a lot of people are actually entitled to GP visit cards way more than you would think! It’s based on your income versus your outgoings! I have said this to lots of people over the last year and 95% of them have ended up getting a GP card and they didn’t think they were entitled.

• schoolbooks are free.

-Over 70's get a medical card

• abortions are available after 12 weeks for abnormalities
• very surprised they couldn't get work in Cork, huge pharmacy, tech (Apple) a big hospital as well as all the Big 4 accountants etc are here There would be immigration into Cork due to the highly skilled workers and there is two universities.
• agree with pay by weight for refuse, encourages recycling and compost.

They get paid a lot more

Education is very good

I have private health insurance and pay for A&E and GP visits!

@summertimeinLondon nailed it!

can you not claim the a&e part back through your insurance?
as for the gp if you go to the website and pop in your details you may be surprised

Plus GP cards also take your savings into account so not as many would qualify as you might think.

My eldest who is 26 has just moved into a house share in Dublin. €800 per month but that includes bills so she's lucky!

I paid £500 a month nearly 20 years ago T uni outside London

Yep, we moved from SW England to West Cork for better schooling when DS was little and haven’t regretted it for a second. I live in a large detached house with 2 acres of land and absolutely love living here!

We are seeing the impact of years of no investment

they take into account the income from savings. They don’t take the actual savings into account. I had ample savings when I applied for mine. And I was on 50 K.
My friend is on 60 K and had 50 K in the credit union and still got a GP visit card