Grace O Malley

Ha ha

Me speechless, never! The blessed irish tounge! Busy at work. I never knew Galway had a beer festival, sounds great, are all the bars participating? Do u know buskers? Its owned by Terry Sweeney, he has 2 bars in Clifden and has just finished building his house right by my mum and dads house,

Have fun, i am having a very lazy weekend at home not going out this weekend as i have a really busy week ahead and if go on the lash it takes me about 3 days to recover

Jock04

Hiyah

Me head hurts!

The beer festival wasn't great, only a few pubs involved. Ended up going back to Spiddal!

I know Buskers well, often go in of a Sunday morning for brunch & live jazz. Like it a lot, but it can get too packed in summer. That's one thing on a saturday night, but it's a real pain on a sunday morning!

Anyway, a lot of sport-watching at the w/end. Glad to see South Africa win the rugby, devastated at Celtic losing 3-0 to Rangers.:curse:

Absolutely lashing here today. I mean REALLY lashing.

henchard

Hi, I'm new here and also tagging on my questions to this thread as the original topic seemed fairly close to my own.

My wife and I live in the UK and are also contemplating the move to Ireland. Many of the issues already made have crossed our minds. However, our position is that we own a fairly valuable house in the south of the UK and could sell up and buy somewhere smaller for a third of the price in rural Ireland. This means that we could retire now in our early 50's.

However, Ireland isn't just a whim we have a deep love of Irish music and in particular that from East Clare where we would hope to live and integrate into the community. Also the absence of Council tax is a big plus when we would also want to pursue our other passion of travelling (i.e. we wouldn't be paying dead money on property tax when we weren't there).

Ok onto the specific points and I'd be glad of any pointers from those in the know.

Firstly we only would become resident in Ireland (unless we elect to do so) if we stay more than 183 days or more in Ireland during a tax year or
if we spend 280 days or more in Ireland over a period of two consecutive tax year.

How does anyone know? We don't need a passport to enter Ireland, could drive over the border and will generally be 'toing' and 'froing' on our travels. Who would actually keep tabs?

Secondly if we do become resident but remain domiciled in the UK am I correct in saying that we would only fall into the Irish tax system for income we bring into Ireland? The reason I ask is that we have some tax exempt savings in the UK (ISA's mostly); there would seem to be little point bringing them out of a tax shelter. Does anyone know of any good sources of advice on this situation?

Thanks in advance and we're back off to Clare next week for another look round.

Grace O Malley

Hi wee laddy

No sympathy for u

I heard all about the rugby, was a few upset fans around I am sure for celtic and England

What else new in Co Galway?

I might be home next month for a few days

AC

Jock04

Hi AC

maybe coming home for a few days,eh? That'll be nice for you, re-charge the batteries, feel the cold etc etc!

Nothing much going on in the county right now, not this side of it anyway.
Housing market has finally settled down, & with it employing so many people, there's a lot of wait-and-see going on, which essentially means there's nothing going on!
Sure you'll have heard from elsewhere about the very sad incident with the foreign student in the city, won't dwell on it here.

Lots of work going on with the new motorway to Dublin, so we'll probably get even more tourists when that's done.

Apart from that, I guess it's a pre-Christmas kind of lull over the place just now. Clocks went back, it's dark at 6, everyone's shuffling around heads down, looking tired.
I, however, refuse to subscribe to such doom & gloom and am going out to get royally sloshed at the weekend!

Hope you're working hard & also finding time to have some fun!

Chickenlady

Thanks to everyone for the replies

well - an update - we bit the bullet and have sold up and moved !!!

We sold our semi in East Durham and bought a lovely wooden eco-house near Drumandoora in Clare. Moved in in early October and have no regrets as yet.


The peace and quiet is something else... Chickenchild has settled in superbly at school and picked up Gaeilge amazingly well for a couple of weeks of learning.

Locals are SO friendly - got invited to a party next door the first weekend we were here... Local services can't do enough to help - a far cry from UK customer services.

Getting used to the pace of life being much slower - no sense of urgency which can be a drawback if you need a plumber or sparky in a hurry... filled in all the forms to register our cars as soon as we arrived and STILL haven't heard anything...

But we're here and it's amazing

Hope this helps anyone who's toying with the idea of a move from the UK

Grace O Malley

Thats great, congratulations, keep us up to date.

Blow In

new start

I had the same experience of childhood in London. I used to spend extended periods back in Ireland, look very Irish and have an Irish name so was always taunted when going back to school until the accent wore down again. There was some teasing but not malicious when we went to Ireland- mainly taking the mickey out of our London accents. See we couldn't win, Irish said we sounded English, English said we sounded Irish LOL My relatives who moved back from the UK to Ireland say overall it is cheaper in Ireland and settled immediately, I would love to move there, have been trying to persuade OH for yeas but hubby not keen, he doesn't know why. We are trying to emigrate to the states as we love it there too (better climate, shopping & internet than Eire) but if I didn't have kids I would definitely move to Ireland in the interim and I have already said I am not coming back to UK if we dont settle, I am going back to Ireland instead, a house in the middle of nowhere would be just grand.
My birth cert may state I am English but have always felt more at home in Ireland.