What would Ireland look like if we didn't join the EU?

I'd take the sh1t road surface in return for turfing out the EU rules. It is a high commitment club to be in, they regulate everything from a minimum price of petrol to what kind of food we are allowed to eat and what kind of car we are allowed to drive.

Ireland has one of the higher petrol prices in Europe and most of it is made up of domestic taxes (VAT/Duty etc). How is that the big bad EU's fault? I'm glad for high EU food standards - god knows what shiite we'd be eating otherwise - food standards in the US are grim compared to here. What kind of car are you denied driving by the EU?

Probably much like Bulgaria outside of Sunny Beach looks like even now. Ireland has seen dramatic and welcome economic, social and societal change as part of the EU.

The reactionary component of Catholic conservatism and opposition to change was strong and I often wonder what would have happened to our EEC - EC- EU membership path if social media and right wing reactionary movements were able to avail of those tools in the '70s,80's and 90's or even pre Maastricht and Lisbon.

It was hard enough to deal with information pre the last 2 EU referenda. Imagine what the situation would have been like facing those votes in the full on Social Media glare?

I'd think the likes of Cambridge Analytica and other data mining and influence operations would have had a field day!

The notion that we need the EU to be successful is a complete fallacy. Ireland was poor in the 60's due to our own internal insular economic policy. Maidens at the crossroads and all that stuff.

The wealth we have would have happened anyway in a globalised world. It suits small countries.

The EU needs serious reform and to be a trading bloc. Nothing more than that.

The EU has sufficient warning with Brexit and issues in other countries like Poland and Hungary atm not to further infringe on national sovereignty.

And lets not even begin with the economic prison for the "PIIGS" countries that is the Euro currency. We have already seen what happens when you have a currency involving countries of entirely different outlooks in 2008. Again sufficient warning has been given.

There is an indoctrination in Ireland from the political class regarding the EU which verges on fanatical and it's not healthy particularly in the long run.

Shows how little understanding you have of the practicalities of being a young family.

Not to mention the Market and contacts the EU opened up to Ireland. A small country. When you look at the difficulty the British are having negotiating other trade deals to compensate for no EU it really stands out. And the UK is a much larger country.

It does not bear thinking about how a small country like Ireland would fare on the outskirts of Europe geographically and outside the EU. It’s negotiating power would have been severely weakened and basically would only have the British to prop Ireland up.

EU membership also caused a high level of security for foreign investors in the country. It basically paved the way for various IT companies from the US coming into Ireland.

We are not switzerland or norway. Without the EU we would still be a backwards hole.

Yes; really.

You think it's trivial to up sticks to a "warmer, sunnier" country with young children? There's a myriad of considerations like employment, local language ability, education, relationships with grandparents, aunts / uncles, cousins. Not to mention that most young families are pretty happy here in Ireland, despite grappling with rapidly rising housing costs.

We’d be somewhat similar to New Zealand and have probably had negotiated a number of trade deals with other countries and the EU. People forget that Ireland had a lot more industry before joining the EU. There was also multinationals opening/long established here before EU membership. Off my head Krups came here in 1964. We also had more hospitals, less crime and less homelessness.

Take Thurles for example, still an unemployment black spot for over 32 years. It had Irish Sugar, Erin Foods, Phoenix Yarns, SweeneysBakery Tiklas, Tipperary Candy, Tipperary Cereals, Hibernian Foods, Marriot Radiators O' Meara's and Dwans. Suir Valley Icecream, Cody's, bakrery. The town was booming in the 1960s.

replace Thurles with any other provincial town and I’m sure it’d be similar story.

Straight up lie

Agreed. However, the context of this discussion is the EU. There is no historical precedent for statistically significant numbers of young Irish families emigrating to EU countries, with the exception of the UK, which is no longer a member. I don't believe that it's highly probable that we will see substantial waves of Irish emigrants transplanting to Germany, France, Scandinavia etc.

I also agree that housing costs could potentially be a push factor. There are several root causes of the housing crises that we are currently experiencing, one of which is of course, supply and demand. The supply simply isn't there to cater for strong demand from a growing population, driven to a large extent by natural increase, but also by substantial inward migration, from both within and outside of the EU.

we d probably be fcuked outside of the eu, the uk is gonna seriously regret this one, you do most of your trade with your closed neighbors, so that would mean, we d be screwed

What particular rules are you referring to? Not a generic statement but a particular law or rule