Moving to NI questions

[hedgehoggle]

This is something we've started mooting for various reasons such as housing, quality of life... but had a few practical questions. Hopefully someone will be able to help!

We're considering areas around Belfast and I wondered:

1. How difficult is it to find a primary place? DS would be 5/6 probably, we are Catholic if that makes a difference.
2. How difficult is it to find a nursery place? DD will be around 1/2
3. What's the NHS like? And maternity care? Although maternity care couldn't be much worse than some places by us!

Thanks so much for any answers

@Treesinmygarden
Look, I get it, people are naturally going to be defensive about the place they're from or that they've chosen to move to and make home. It doesn't mean other people's experiences and opinions are "bollocks" though. People are allowed to not like the place where they grew up and to say why.
Deflecting by saying "but what about England" is irrelevant, of course the violence was terrible but we're not talking about England here, also the racist riots happened in NI at the same time too, so I'm not sure what your point is there.
I'm glad you have friends of all religions and that you don't care about the politics/marches but that's not the norm in NI and it's pretty disingenuous to claim otherwise. A few more integrated schools and "it's not as bad as during the troubles" is a pretty low bar when choosing a place to move to.

‘I'm glad you have friends of all religions and that you don't care about the politics/marches but that's not the norm in NI and it's pretty disingenuous to claim otherwise’

How exactly are you qualified to comment on ‘the norm’ when you do not live here, nor are you particularly clued up on modern day life in NI judging by the amount of blatantly inaccurate + outdated comments you have made on this thread? You know very little and are simply keen to spout your experiences from 20+ years ago. Times have changed yet you can’t seem to accept this. @CollegeApplications

Drawing conclusions on ‘small rural Catholic towns’ and tarring the rest of NI with the same brush is just ignorant and ridiculous. I’m Belfast born and bred - you genuinely couldn’t pay me to live in a little insular town like that for a reason.

I'm glad you have friends of all religions and that you don't care about the politics/marches but that's not the norm in NI and it's pretty disingenuous to claim otherwise

I've lived here nearly 20 years and that has absolutely been the norm among my friends and colleagues in that time.

Fleggs not flags.

Exactly the same with my kids, and their friends! Bless them, they didn't have a clue!!

Though a contemporary of mine, back in the early 80s, studying Pharmacy, once asked whether the IRA was Catholic....

Mine also came home with questions @OzCalling - this year's Sunday Times School of the Year!! 😄

Mine have all left now. TG!

I'm neither being "disengenuous" or "defensive" @CollegeApplications! I am speaking from personal experience of living here long-term which you have not done! It's pretty offensive that you presume to override my actual experience of having lived here for the last 35 years, worked and reared my family here!

Why are your parents still here then, if it is such an odious place? Why do you even visit them when you hate it so much?

I have friends and close colleagues of all religions and none, and I have only once in my entire life been made aware that someone did not want to associate with me because of my perceived religion. I was really shocked by that, and it's within the last 5 years!

It absolutely IS the norm in (and I hate to say it) middle class, educated society in NI. I grew up in rural NI, not a million miles from the Triangle, and nobody even made a difference re religion back then 40/50 years ago!!!!

There was no "deflecting" - I was merely pointing out that violence can break out wherever you are. I am also old enough to recall the poll tax riots and I was living in London at the time!

It's a helluva a lot more than "a few more integrated schools" - it's a whole seachange! Maybe you should educate yourself before you criticise.

You can dislike whatever you want, and your bitterness is clear. I will not stand by though and see someone slander the place when it is really not how things are, and you blowing in and blowing out, with your prejudices on board, are not going to understand how it really is!!

@OzCalling You're hilarious, it's you who is embarrassing yourself if you think your DD's experience at one "sought after" school is the norm across NI.

Belfast School Girls hurt in sectarian hate crime, 2020
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54441773.amp

newhumanist.org.uk/articles/6208/why-northern-irelands-schools-are-still-segregated#:~:text=Over%2090%20per%20cent%20of,“support”%20to%20integrated%20education.

"Over 90 per cent of pupils attend schools which are effectively segregated along religious lines." 2023

www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0227/1434591-northern-ireland-religion-evangelicalism-identity-survey-feb-2024/

www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0227/1434591-northern-ireland-religion-evangelicalism-identity-survey-feb-2024/

"Two new surveys confirm both the strength of evangelicalism and the unusually high levels of religious practice among both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland", 2024.

Even if I didn't have direct experience of NI and eyes and ears, a quick Google would confirm what I'm saying. You're living in lala land if you think most local Northern Irish born and bred kids are unaware of religion.

I’m not living in la la land, just a rather lovely cosmopolitan part of Belfast called BT9! We don’t discriminate against each other for race or religion and it’s increasingly pricey + popular here for a reason. I’d say you should visit sometime but you seem very close minded.. probably wouldn’t fit in. What a shame, darling!

No, you are the one embarrassing yourself with your 20+ years of non experience!

Your hatred of the place is visceral. Fair play, you may have had a bad experience. Plenty of people do growing up, and that's not right.

You are 20+ years out of date though.

I was in a seminar in University Square when a law lecturer from the UU community was shot dead. My tutor. an Irish RC closely connected to the Irish govt was in tears because they were friends.

Later I worked in an NI newspaper. One of my new colleagues did "sit with Nelly" training with me. She married her DP of the opposite religion a few months after I had been there. They had lived together for years before, but shortly after their wedding, they were shot in their bed. He lived, she died.

I could cite plenty of other examples! NI is nothing like that now!! It's not perfect but then, where is??

@Treesinmygarden I haven't overridden you, I've just talked about my own experiences and perceptions of a place, it's you who have invalidated all my experiences and labelled them "bollocks".
I lived in NI for 13 years in total, I didn't just blow in and out for a few months.
And I'm talking about the 00s and 2010s, that was relatively recently, not even a full generation ago. Religious division was very much there across society as a whole, including in my middle class bubble, though obviously in those circles nobody is going to tell you directly to your face that they don't like your religion.
I've no reason to make any of this up or to be prejudiced against NI, I literally hadn't heard of the place before being taken there.
Clearly I go to visit my parents because I love them and want to see them, they're still there because they're retired and they like it, that's their choice. They moved there late in life and have not had to contend with coming of age there or trying to fit into local schools or trying to get their first graduate job etc.
I'm not bitter at all, perhaps not entirely delighted at having to spend my formative years in the back of beyond, though I can appreciate the place is beautiful and I've never said it was odious - just not somewhere I'd advise anyone to move to, for reasons I've already listed.

I've literally posted links from reputable news sources with statistics and current reporting from up to 2024 that backs up a lot of what I'm saying, yet people are still going on about me being "20 years out of date", ok then. I'm sorry the truth hurts.

Your experiences are meaningless because you are talking about a long time ago. You were clearly here against your will, so your attitude will reflect that.

I grew up in north Antrim, and it was pretty miserable, but I made up for it when I went to uni in Belfast! Again that was over 40 years ago, and most young people these days have a car from 17/18 and they're not cut off the way I was and my peers were. I wasn't delighted to "spend my formative years at the back of beyond" either but I'm not bitter about it!

NI has come on by leaps and bounds. You refuse to see it. Religious division is not what it was amongst the educated and middle class and I am so glad about that.

People here have worked so hard to get out society to where it is now, and it baulks me to see someone who hasn't lived here in 20+ years diss that progress!!

I had to find my first graduate job in the 1980s when I can assure you it was one of a hell much harder thing to do than when you were a graduate then!!! There were feck all jobs in NI. Nobody wanted to invest here!! I did a postgrad and ended up moving to London on a transfer from my management consultancy employer in Belfast, an experience I will always be grateful for! My cohort all struggled but by and by we made it, whether in NI or elsewhere.

Two of my children have studied in English unis, and in Europe. Their minds have been broadened immeasurably and they were never in the least bit bigoted in the first place, because they think it's all shite!

Nhs is much much worse than London. Like really shocking and pre school and nursery system a bit terrible as well - no free places until they are 4!! And even then we were only offered 2.5 hours a day. Schools are good - but still more religious than expected. Depending on where you coming from be prepared for a very different culture. Grandparents do a lot of childcare and there are lots of people who still hang out with their besties from school, there is still a general distrust of blow ins/new people. I am catholic and lived in London for many years and moved back to mixed area with English hubbie and kids 3 years ago. Missed London and my GP way more than I expected but no regrets. Good luck!!

Honestly there are still so many fleggs everywhere. Its like a BNP party every summer - even in the lovely "mixed" areas. Having been away for 20 years, I find it baffling and still quite intimidating. Not to put you off OP - just like, its not like the rest of the UK at all. Its very very different, and still very white, and still quite mad. But the people are nice, if you like mad people :)

@lauraloulou1 Ooh just wait til the others on this thread jump down your throat, apparently NI is a cosmopolitan hub and religion isn't a thing in schools, the kids don't even know if they're Catholic or Protestant 😂

I'll concede that the NHS is shite, though I don't know what it is like in London, so I can't compare. I developed a tumour on my adrenal gland a few years ago which came to light during a scan for something else, and I couldn't fault the speed with which they removed it and TG it was benign.

However I had a neuro consult 3 years ago and was told there was definitely something wrong but the consultant "would need to think" what it might be, while he didn't think it was MS or Parkinson's. So reassuring, 3 years down the line! I was also diagnosed about 4 years ago with severe bile acid malabsportion which has the potential to become cancerous, and I am still waiting for my review appointment.

I don't know though how these stats compare with the rest of the UK because it all seems to be pretty shit!

I think @lauraloulou1 it depends on where you are coming from and where you move to - but isn't it the same no matter what part of the world you go to?

It’s full of Westies with money lol

Yeah, it pisses me off every year when the neanderthals erect flegs on our main roads around where we live, and there is not a single fleg in our street, not in any of the streets in the road we live off. It makes me so cross that we have to put up with this - I hate all flags equally!!!

The NHS is awful here @lauraloulou1 - fully agree with that! DD had surgery on the NHS in London (they sent her over due to waiting lists) and the difference in their hospitals was like night and day! So calm, modern and organised. We have private health insurance and pretty much exclusively use private GPs - it’s the only way at the minute to access timely care.

100% agree- I lived in Scotland for twenty years and moved back. Still full of sectarianism and segregation. Some middle class pockets not so much but they can be backward in other ways.
The schools and housing are a great selling point but it isn’t like Scotland.

@Treesinmygarden Why does it piss you off, I thought you said there's no religious divide and you ignore politics?

Was that really necessary?

I take it you live in England with all its prejudices??

Such a nasty post!! Very many of our children are brought up without having a strong sense of being Catholic or Protestant because it isn't a big deal at all to their parents! Who are you to diss that?!!!

So nasty!!!

St Bride's in South Belfast is probably a good place to start. You will need to be in the catchment area.

Sorry OP just read your post on moving to Ballymena or Carrickfergus - really wouldnt advise! Not much there - tiny towns with loads of borded up shops and general urban decay, particularly Carrickfergus. Belfast would be your best bet, East Belfast is really nice as is Holywood. There is an old joke about Ballymena being a "Im a catholic, get me out of here" kind of territory and although it wouldnt be that overt these days, you may still find it a shock! Get over for a long holiday Id say and rent a house. The weather is also shite. Still would recommend!! Just go in with open eyes as its a big move xx

It pisses me off because I don't think people should shit where they eat.

I can't ignore it when it is shoved in my face!!!!!

And also because it pisses me off that people will be offended by it, and there is no need to be territorial!

Comprende?