We made it to Ireland!
 

Well, we've been here three weeks now, our stuff arrived earlier this week, kidlets started school last Monday, the house is fantastic, job is going well and even the weathers been pretty good. :D

All in all it was a fairly easy move, (did I really just say that??? :scared: ) but yes, considering everything thats MIGHT have gone wrong it was infact, a very straightforward move. We've got just about everything organised but rather than rattle on here at the moment I'll just say I'm happy to share my experiences on things such as opening the bank account, buying cars, schooling and such like. I'm no expert by any manner of means but as I said, happy to share anything that might be useful, just ask.......don't even THINK about asking me about internet connections *kicks her dial up tin can connection*..it's the one bad thing about our move but has more to do with where we moved to than bad service.

It's been a busy, fantastic few weeks but well worth it!...an no, I haven't tried the Guinness yet! :D

BSG

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Congratulations on your wise choice of country!

Where are you in Ireland?

Being nosey here, but what type of house did you get for your money?

Cheers

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Hi Paddy

We moved just outside Gorey, Co.Wexford. To an area that's very "touristy". It's beatiful and very relaxing but a tad too far for daily commuting to Dublin. For 750 Euro a month we got a four bedroom house, furnished. It's beautiful, very spacious and has a "holiday" feel about it. The living areas are up and the bedrooms are downstairs which I love.

I had a look on "Daft.ie" yesterday and houses round here are pretty scarse now, probably because they're now being marketed as holiday lets but the few that there are are smaller and more expensive. As an added bonus I got a really great landlord too. :D

Hong Kong??? wow!

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Hi BSG - Welcome to Ireland. Are you on the Courtown side of Gorey? My family lives only about 20 miles away from you. Are you working in the area or in Dublin? I can sell you my house if you want to live in the Midlands :D Seriously, it's lovely down there. Funny thing - I was talking to a young guy from Dublin recently who was down there for a weekend and he thought it was really backward. He couldn't get over the fact that there were women playing darts in a pub. :D Bless. You'll soon find out that it's like another country in Dublin. ;) Or maybe another planet. You're a culchie now :) If you haven't heard that before, it means anyone from the country as opposed to being born in Dublin.

Hope you have a ball here - it really is a friendly place.

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

*chuckling* yes, Batty...I've been called a "culchie" by my neibour who moved recently from Dublin....they're a lovely family. Yes, Im just beside Courtown, I find it a little...*thinks*..not "backwards" but certainly things are as they were in the UK where i grew up, 20 years ago...even the food in Tescos is packaged the way it was all those years ago over there....haven't been in a pub yet but I wouldn't find it weird to see women playing darts!!

Not buying right now, prices are extortionate even this far south so we're shopping around while we build up our credit and a good deposit.

I LOVE it!! I love the fact that the banks don't open on Saturdays, nor do I get post delivered on Saturdays, I love stepping outside and wandering down to the beach, driving along the shoreline as I take the girls to school (they go to school in Co. Wicklow)....I love the laid back relaxed attitude of the electricians who can pop round "later this afternoon" and the shop assistants who say "1.39 is fine, I'll get the rest again" when Im trying to work out the small change and then discover I'm ten cents short and need to break a 20.......I love the fact that if I ask someone for help or directions I'll be drawn into a 20 minute conversation......and I love that I feel really safe and my neibours always give me a wave and a smile.

I don't ever want to live in a city again!! :D

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Many thanks for your reply, I was in Co. Wexford last August.......nice place!

So, I imagine you came over from Scotland (lucky guess?), what drew you to Ireland in the first place?

How hard/easy has it been finding a job?

Yep! Hong Kong it is for me.......16 years now!

We did seriously look at Ireland (my father is Irish) but looks like we will head for Australia in a few years (Melbourne).

Ireland was a 'very close second' though & I still wouldn't discount it completely! My wife is Japanese so she though Oz would be better for her than Ireland.

Cheers.

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Hi again, Paddy

I realised after I posted you might have been asking how much to BUY rather than rent. This spacious four bed holiday home would set you back around 260K Euro. which is cheap considering a few miles up the road the same money wouldn't get you a two bed terrace. Friends I met here bought small four bedroom houses around here for 160k Euro but before they even moved in they're complaining that they are too small (they've been renting the houses round here).

Why did we select Ireland?....well, we actually wanted to go to the US but the visa is so hard to get and our eldest child is now 13 and desperately needing stability to complete her education. We didn't want to stay in Scotland so selected Ireland for a number of reasons. It's english speaking, fairly similar to Scotland, work was easy to find and so on and so on...everything we needed we could get from Ireland....as an added bonus, we find a lot about Ireland to be very "american" *L*

Was work easy to find?....my husband is in IT, he could take his pick of jobs up in Dublin...unfortunatly we didn't fully realise that when he got his first, very good offer....accepted it then realised he could have negotiated an even better deal :D ...but that said...we're happy with what he got and should anything go wrong with this job (unlikely) then there will be plenty others around...Dublin being THE place for IT right now.

Ireland appears to be a bit of a melting pot, I heard reports of racisim against black South Africans (please excuse my lack of PC here) but I think that was localised to one area. For the most part we've found the Irish to be welcoming, helpful and extremely warm people.

One great thing about this country....you pay for what you use!! How simple is that?? if you want to drive a big car....that's fine....but you'll pay for more road tax than the person driving a small one.....you want your rubbish collected?...chose the size of bin you want, pay the bill and they'll collect it.....and one that really made me chuckle was when I had to find a dentist for my six year old.....she goes to a national school (state maintained) so she gets free dental care through her school....had I put the girls to private schools (which I did when they were in England), I wouldn't have got free dental care for them.

My local friends say give it six months and I'll be as dissilusioned as the rest of them........we'll see! *L*

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

that's exactly what I was thinking when I read your post! The electricians attitude will p*ss you off at some point, when you *really* need the service. Same goes for the rest of the "relaxed" attitude - it gets fairly annoying if you want to get anything done and need to rely on other people (we'll be there between 9 am and 6 pm. We expect you to be at home during these hours...). The healthcare system is crap, noone is ever on time, and if you've ever tried to deal with eircom, esb, ntl or any other bigger company, you will find out the true meaning of incompetence.

But other than that - Ireland is a great country, if slightly over-priced, and becoming fairly racist...(oh, and the weather is crap, but no surprise there...;-))

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Found myself nodding a LOT as I read your post, agreeing with everything you said, perhaps we're more relaxed because it's not "our" country, or we just got here so the novelty hasn't worn off yet......or perhaps our time in South Africa trained us well :D

ESB have already threatned my credit rating :( I have been here for less than one calendar month, they sent a "request" for a 150 Eur security deposit which I don't recall ever seeing, do they KNOW how much crud and paperwork you have to deal with when you move????.......and now they are getting "heavy" (for want of a better word) and saying if I don't pay it they will disconnect my service........what were you saying about incompetence???? *L*......what happened to asking nicely or a gentle reminder????

Other than that......still smiling!!

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Hi BSG

The ESB are pussycats really. Just call them up and talk to a person. They're actually one of the more reasonable organisations you'll have to deal with. On the other hand, if you can, stay as far away from Eircom as is possible to get :mad: ESAT BT are quite good. They had a problem with their internet server a week ago and I wasn't sure if the problem was on my side or not so called them up. I didn't give my number or name but discovered where the problem was and that they were working on it. OK, so a couple of hours later it was fixed and that afternoon I got a call to tell me that they were up and running again. I nearly fell over from shock :eek: I was very impressed I have to tell you, especially since they had to go to the bother of looking up my details to call me.

I'm heading off to NZ later this year and I've already lived in a couple of other countries and the one thing I know for sure is, if you look for problems you'll find them. No matter what country you live in, and that applies to my living here too. If I were really honest and told you about how I feel here, you'd probably want to pack up and leave today :) But, that's just me and everyone else I know loves the place. If I wasn't leaving I'd probably be the same and I think that's the crux of it all. If you know that it's a temporary arrangement it's very hard to settle. Anyway, you'll make up your own mind, it's not difficult to have a good time here if you want to.

Cheers
Batty

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

hehe, good to hear that people are still enthusiastic ;-) (I am, too, in some aspects - and I've been here for almost 2 years now..;-))

Regarding the ESB: you should be able to get around the 150 Euro deposit if you agree to have a direct debit set up - I just moved house, and they were quite happy with that...

Re: if they know how much work moving house and country is: they don't give a **** - it took me 10 (ten!) phone calls to get Eircom to connect my phone line, first the person never put my order through, then I got disconnected while trying to put another order through, then they didnt get the address right, then they finally had it, but my phone was still dead (and the charming lady at faults told me "to buy a new phone" - yeah, that really helps when the line is dead...), and ultimately it turns out that the drongo who took my order set the wrong exchange for the house - so it was registering some lonely godforsaken place out in Connemara. Geez, I was happy...But after only two weeks, I got it sorted.
Got my cable connected yesterday - you'd think that any respectable cable company would actually install the cables and put them neatly around the house...think again..they just threw 35 metres of cable into my living room, plugged one end in the socket, the other in the telly, and buggered off. Leaving me with a hammer and a zillion cable clamps...*aaargh.

And here's a good one too: with the two main suppliers of electricity and phone services, you'd think you'd be able to pay their bills by credit card...well, another myth busted...

But apart from all these little gems (at least you have a good story to tell in the pub, and shock friends and family in other countries..;-)), Ireland is a great country, people are still friendly, and it is relaxed (as in, the rules are bent a bit more if you know people...)

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

Hi Din

If you are with Bank of Ireland you can pay ESB and Eircom through Banking 365. You just have to call them to give them the account numbers and they set it up immediately for you. Don't know what the situation is with others though. There's also a thing through An Post called billpay.ie. A bit more complicated but once you're set up you can pay all sorts through there.

Where are you?

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

yeah, heard about the billpay, but don't trust An Post..;-) I'm with AIB, and the direct debit thing seems to work fine, so far...(maybe it's just me, but after a while over here, I've become such a cynic...)

Based in Galway, love the city! Where are you?

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

I work in Dublin but live in Mountmellick in Laois :( 4 hour commute every day! I love Galway too. Mind you, I think most people would say that. I've got a sister up there and other relations and friends. It's great. Are you a returnee? Or a brand new immigrant? Bit of a shock to the system if you are. :) Actually, probably even more of a shock if you've been away a few years and returned, like I did.

Being a cynic seems to be a requirement these days - how long are you here? Sorry. All these questions.

Re: We made it to Ireland!
 

hehe, now it's getting complicated...;-) I am German actually, moved to Ireland for a year, then moved to Oz for a couple of years, ran into visa trouble over there (&$£*! immigration), and moved back to Ireland in 2003...So I'm all over the shop, really ;-) 4 hour commute sounds fun - but if it makes you feel better - it takes me an hour for 3 km drive home from work...stupid Irish town layouts, not prepared for high volumes of traffic at peak hours (and don't get me started on Irish drivers...)