Living in Ireland - Positives/Negatives

finlma

Having lived away from Ireland for 3 years now and seeing a lot of the world I can't see myself settling back there again. Just wondering what peoples thoughts are on the postives and negatives of living there.

Positives:
The people and the craic
The Guinness

Negatives:
Crap Government
Terrible public transport
Awful weather
Ridiculously expensive cost of living with average salaries
Houses are a rip-off

Kevin_rc_ie

Where you living now? These things you mentioned are rather relative?

billy the squid

positives

you can get to any part of the country in a couple of hours
the atmosphere in a pub
traditional irish music (not that wolfe tones **** im talking about real music)

negatives

the high prices
ithe piety of some people in the country
the smoking ban :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Raskolnikov

Positives: the smoking ban

finlma

Kevin_rc_ie wrote:

Where you living now? These things you mentioned are rather relative?

I'm in New Zealand as we speak. A lot of the negatives of Ireland don't exist here. Its a great place and I'd stay if it wasn't so far away from family and friends.

trotter_inc

The biggest negative (imo) is the price of stuff like houses and all the bloody taxes we pay :mad:

But I wouldnt live anywhere else!

Jonny Arson

TBH the only thing I like about Ireland is that its not a third world country. Apart from that this is a completely rubbish country to live in.

Gizzard

Pub atmosphere has taken a battering after the smoking ban, I was in a pub on Saturday night and it was half empty I was amazed

Gizzard

oh and bin charges are a disgrace

Stephen

The rest of the country has been paying bin charges for years, its about time you dubs were made to suffer too

Lex_Diamonds

Stay in New Zealand. Forget your family and friends...they're gone now. (Or get them shipped over.)

One positive I can think of is the proximity to alot of other countries. Europe is on your doorstep. Guess this kinda turned into a negative didnt it? Hmmm.

The Sweeper

I don't want to live in Ireland for lots of reasons, however I have to say that I think Irish people just don't realise when they're on to a good thing.

Water rates, public transport, bin collection fees, roads being dug up for weeks on end and so on... yes they're all bad things.

But I live in the south of England, and our household pays £115 a month in council tax and £24 a month in water rates and I pay £70 a month in train fares, for the pleasure of having a halfway useful police force, clean water, trains that run on time and aren't overcrowded, my bins and recycling collected and the road outside dug up and relaid all in one day.

Now - people of Dublin - how do you fancy shelling out over €300 a month to improve all the things you complain about?

Blub2k4

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Now - people of Dublin - how do you fancy shelling out over €300 a month to improve all the things you complain about?

If it was to work then I wouldn't have a problem with it, I used to live in Germany in a similar situation and despite high living costs there were advantages to walking into the docs and paying nothing, for one thing.

445279.ie

Zane from MTV2 wrote:

TBH the only thing I like about Ireland is that its not a third world country. Apart from that this is a completely rubbish country to live in.

This is what it says about you in your profile Zane from MTV2:
Unemployed college student who is is a tax dodging paracite on society. (I'm proud of it!)

You probably wouldn't be tolerated in another country! So quit complaining and get a job.

Tom Dunne

Having lived abroad also, I am always careful no to run down our country. I am also carful not to see other countries through rose tinted glasses - there are pro's and con's living anywhere.

pros of living in Ireland:

friends and family
proximity to Europe

cons of living in Ireland:

weather (as one foreign friend said to me, Ireland doesn't have a climate, it has weather).
prices of everything
third-world healthcare
third-world infrastructure (roads, rail, communications)

theflyingrapist

there are way too many scumbags like me

trotter_inc

Raskolnikov wrote:

Positives: the smoking ban

I'll second that one!

Sleepy

Pros
The People - Say what you like, in general, I still think Irish people are great.
The Guinness - It's undrinkable anywhere else.
Our music scene - sure you get pretentious pricks like Paddy Casey, Sinead O' Connor et al but you also get the likes of Damien Rice, Therapy?, Ash, Paul Brady, U2, Thin Lizzy etc.
Ryanair - making Europe closer
Our [relative] lack of pollution.
High Employment
Hurling and Gaelic Football

Cons
Our inability to elect a government with the management skills required to manage a McDonalds, never mind a country.
The rip-off culture.
The corruption, and our complete lack of balls in dealing with it.
Woeful Heath Service.
Woeful Infrastructure.
The growing gap between the mega rich and the rest of us.
The Scumbags.
Our tolerance for terrorists, criminals and chancers in general.
High Insurance Premiums.
The fact that nearly everything in this second list could be solved by sorting out the first one.
The Weather.
Religeon - while it exists, it'll always be a problem. It may be a worldwide thing but we seem particularly suceptible to it's particular brand of evil in this country.

BolBill

[QUOTE=Sleepy

Cons
Our inability to elect a government with the management skills required to manage a McDonalds, never mind a country.
The rip-off culture.
The corruption, and our complete lack of balls in dealing with it.
Woeful Heath Service.
Woeful Infrastructure.
The growing gap between the mega rich and the rest of us.
The Scumbags.
Our tolerance for terrorists, criminals and chancers in general.
High Insurance Premiums.
The fact that nearly everything in this second list could be solved by sorting out the first one.
The Weather.
Religeon - while it exists, it'll always be a problem. It may be a worldwide thing but we seem particularly suceptible to it's particular brand of evil in this country.[/QUOTE]

Yeah the f-ing government !!!!!! Bertie the tw*t

The General

Pro's:
We know how to get locked off our tits

Con's:
Weather is sh1te
Everything is too expensive
People are getting greedyer <-dunno how to spell that one)
Insurance for young people
Roads are sh1te(****ing pot holes everywhere)
Leaving cert is a joke
The courts are a joke most of the time as well
We get no snow anymore(well not like we use to years ago)