Who lives in Ireland....???

Question

My family & I are interested in living there. We live in the US & there are too many problems here that they are not taking care of. We want some place better!!! Will you tell me how it is living there?? I know about the weather. Will you tell me about the jobs, people, traffic, schools?? Will you tell me the Pro's & Con's?? Thank you

Answer 1

Any work to be found is in the Cities if you can get one before the foreign nationals. If you choose rural counties, donegal leitrim etc, jobs are few and far between. In the bigger cities, Dublin Belfast etc. there are problems of drugs and crime and youth out of control as bad as anywhere in the USA. Good luck with your decisions.

Answer 2

dont come to the north unless youre planning on living in donegal. Life there is at a slower place and the people are as good as you will find anywhere...apart from that i think poeple in the south are good, decent poeple!!

Answer 3

Jobs depend of qualification

people are great

traffic is only bad at rush hours

schools have a high standard of education

Answer 4

Apart from what the others have written- Dublin is particularly unpleasant. Houses are expensive so you may end up in a not so nice area. The countryside is stunning but the weather is actually a bloody misery. I live in Cork which is a nice city but compared to the rest of Europe it is quaint- yet a bit ugly. Wages are high but the non national population surge is having a negative effect on that. Crime here is nothing compared to the US- you may hear of a shooting in Limerick or something but it's the drug guys shooting each other so who gives a d**n. Eating out is much of the time- too expensive to be worth it. The single best thing about this country, which doesn't have alot of the benefits of mainland Europe, is the people. People are friendly and chatty. You could go out to a pub alone and have twenty friends by the end of the night if you wanted them or not. As a race we are articulate, poetic, very entertaining and chatty- but we also really really- and I mean really like alcohol. Oh and all nightlife (except in Dublin) ceases at 2am by law. Hence we have a great house party tradition! Hope this helps.

Answer 5

well if ur looking at northern ireland we get paid on average £90 less per week than that of england (thats $180 less), we work really long hours

our school system is way earier than yours but your is so much better its unreal i just got accepted to stanford so i had to learn ur education system, but honestly our education system holds nothing compared to urs,

i wouldnt do it if i were u, why dont u just relocate to another state?

iv got a friend who came here with her family from southern california and they stayed  4 months and headed back

Answer 6

well its generally a nice place to live , the health care isn't too good but there trying to sort it out, the school are good (depending on where you live, as far as I know schools in the country are usually better that those in the city but not always!)

jobs are everywhere, enough for everyone! what do your parents work as?

traffic is a bit of a nightmare!!, depending on where you live, again, its worse in Dublin because of the population density but in the suburbs and in the country its fine!

the people are really nice, I know of people that came here from other countries and they were very surprised at how polite the people are here. for instance, a German teacher in my school came over hear and she was having a bit of trouble with the bus service, she didn’t know what bus to take and a random person just came up to help her, something which is unheard of in Germany apparently!

and for everyone who had the cheek to blame foreigners as the reason you don’t have a job, there are more jobs then there are people, you either haven’t been looking properly, have no qualifications, your standards are way too high or a combination of all three!!!

go to any recruitment agency thell find you book loads of work!, look in the jobs section of the newspaper!, my brother works in construction, a sector which is full of non nationals and he has never had a problem finding work in it!!

the majority of foreigners are doing low paid jobs that are below our standards so you cannot blame them, stop pointing the finger!!!

Answer 7

Ok i'll start with school:

children start playschool between the ages of 3 & 4. this is the first start of their education where they will learn the alphabet and numbers, basic irish etc. from there at either the age of 4/5 they will go to primary school. they are in primary school till the age of 12/13. d youngest class is junior infants then the next year it's senior infants then the next year is first class then 2nd class etc till 6th class. when they finish primary school after 6th class they move to secondary school. the first year there they are in first year, then second year, the third year. in third year students take the junior cert, state exams in the subjects they learn. 4th year is called transition year. this is a year where students can relax after the stressful year studing for the junior cert. in 5th year students start working hard again and in 6th year they take  more state exmas called the leaving cert. these exams are huge. you get certain amount of points for certain grades eg if you get an A1 you get 100 points. the maxium points you can achieve is 600 but very few people get that. then by the number of points you get you can do certain courses in college eg nursing is 450 or something so if students don't get 450 points then they can't do nursing. points change every year.

Traffic isn't too bad. dublin of course is the busiest part of ireland regarding traffic. the M50 in dublin is called the biggest car park in ireland because of traffic but that is the only place really that there is bad traffic. they are building a motor way from somewhere in tipp to dublin at the moment and i know in year's to come they are hoping to join it to cork so there will be a motor way from cork to dublin. in alot of busy towns where traffic is bad they eventually build a by-pass around the town so if people have to pass through the town even though they are not stopping then they can take this round around the town.

most irish people are pretty nice. we are very chatty. there are alot of non nationals from poland and latvia coming to ireland and irish people welcome them and they are part of our community. we didn't mind them coming to live in ireland as they have a better life here than they did in their own country and not to long ago many irish families had to emigrate to america and england when ireland was in a bad state.

i can't say much about jobs as i'm only going into 5th year but i do know that the pay is very good here. sorry for the lack of information.

i like living in ireland. although alot of people have busy lives every one still have time for each other. it's a very peacefull place. we have a very stable goverment. people think that ireland is like a war zone because of the north but it's not! they play gaa like we do etc. it's just goverment politics and a border really that's all. (if you get what i mean!!) we are one of the richest countries in the world at the moment! We do not take part in war. the only part we play in the iraq war is letting planes stop in shannon for re-fueling. that's all

Pro's

it's a very simple but yet modern country. people are nice. it's quite easy to get a job.

Con's

i can't really think of anything!

Answer 8

Hi,

I don't know what kind of jobs you are looking for, Ireland has a lot of manufacturing from various multi-national companies, so as I understand it there are a lot of manufacturing jobs.

It all depends on what kind of job/field you want.  I can say that there are few materials research jobs, outside of universities.

The irish people are great: the best thing about the country.  They're having some growing pains at the moment with the influx of foreigners and resentment of them.  But they should get past it eventually.

The weather is truly depressing, can't emphasize it enough.  Never go anywhere in Ireland without an umbrella: don't let that sunny sky fool you: it can rain any second.  Say goodbye to warm sunny summers: hello to rainy/dreary/cool temps.  But when the weather is nice, it is gorgeous: sunny, just warm enough to wear shorts, but rarely warm enough to make ya sweat a lot (if you're already used to warmer climes)

The roads in Ireland (at least in the west where I live) haven't really kept up with the population increase, but they're making progress with new bypasses and such.  A lot of roads "out in the country" are a bit scary tho.. barely barely wide enough for 2 cars, and who knows who could be tearing around that blind corner on your side of the road (especially if they're from somewhere in Eastern Europe and the steering wheel is on the wrong side)...

But traffic can be pretty bad.  I live nowwhere near Dublin, but the traffic there is legendarily bad.  And out here in the west, around rush hour it can take a long time to get anywhere, especially if there is no bypass.  Major roads connecting cities slow to a crawl when they go right thru the center of small towns.

I personally hate driving at night here, cuz when they talk about "who died on the roads last night", a lot of the time it's late at night on those back country roads...

For schools, I am a teaching assistant at my university for engineering students.  I teach first years (freshmen) mostly, so my experience is a bit biased because they are pretty young and away from home.  But their standards of writing skills are simply atrocious.  In talking with my professor and others, I'm told it's how English/writing is taught in Irish schools.  My fiancee has gone through some of the lab reports that I have to grade, and he agrees with me.  He believes something must have changed recently in the schools, because he took the same course I'm teaching and he can't believe how truly horrible the quality of student work is.

And everything here is so very expensive.  I think Ireland is the 2nd most expensive country in Europe.  Food, cars, toiletries, eating out, you name it, it's probably a lot more expensive here than in the US.  It's a national Irish pasttime to hop flights to the US and go shopping, because it's so very much cheaper (especially with the current exchange rate).

And there's a big drinking culture here that isn't as big as in the US.  We Yanks may think we drink a lot, but we're amateurs when it comes to the the Irish and the British.  It's usually not a problem, but sometimes I find it a little disturbing.  I'd say in the US the propensity for young people getting plastered on a regular basis wanes in their mid-20s, but here it lasts up to the mid 30's.  Of course I live at a University, so my experience of drinking is probably a bit skewed from the majority of the population.  But I've been out myself enough in towns and cities to see for myself it's not that far off..

this entry is getting too long, so in summary:

pros:

The irish people (the best reason for living here)

foreign countries are a short, cheap flight away (go to London or France for 24 euros round trip!!)

no snow

beautiful scenery

pubs where they know how to pull a proper pint of Guinness

cons:

the weather

expensive

not sure about the quality of secondary school education (tho i'm a bit biased by what I see in my students)

drink culture

scary roads

health care service has problems (hospital overcrowding, etc..)

Answer 9

Ok forst off i find it IMPOSSIBLE to get a job over here, cos the place is full of polish and forgein people who will work for pretty much nothin so others cannot get a job for love nor money!

As far as education is concerned, Cork have the highest exam results in the country so there would be a good place to live!

Apart from that its a lovely country i wouldnt change it! :)