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Nothing like Dublin in the drizzle to ignite dreams of moving Down Under or somewhere closer
Fewer Irish are emigrating to Australia, where making a new life can be hard. Photograph: Getty A glance at The Irish Times’s most read metric confirms something we’ve always suspected.
As a nation we are very eager to score our performance against others. Whether it’s the opinions of Irish people living abroad or of foreigners living in Ireland, a strong soundbite in the headline will land it in the top 10.
“ There is nothing like a crazily circuitous bus journey around Dublin city through the drizzle to ignite dreams of moving to Melbourne or Mantua. But the daydreams are only a part of it. For many, articles about living abroad also function as a scoresheet, where satisfaction depends on the reader’s perspective, which varies according to confirmation bias and/or sunk costs.
‘At least I’m not English’ – How Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood have traded insults down the yearsTesco worker sacked for taking bakery items before they became ‘free to staff’ loses unfair dismissal claim One of my more challenging assignments during the Celtic Tiger years was eliciting an honest response from people who had sold modest Dublin homes for sums large enough to buy spacious, brighter houses elsewhere with a couple of new SUVs out front and cash to spare – but with the trade-off that they were now living 60km away from the city. Were they still happy with the move a few years later?
The answer almost every time was yes. Yet how many were likely to say no or to admit to making a colossal life mistake even to a friend? Some were verifiably happy; in several cases visiting relatives had been impressed enough to sell up their own Dublin homes and move into the same new estate. But for those who were unhappy, there was no way back: the old Dublin house was already out of reach.
Most people who make a life-changing decision will defend the sunk costs because they have to. Everyone curates their own version of ease with such decisions, especially now that idyllic lives can be performed on social media in slickly edited stories created oceans away. The upshot is that anyone seeking confirmation that Ireland is a kip or is the best little country in the world will find either version readily available.
On the upside, more than 30,000 Irish emigrants made the decision to return to Ireland in the year to April, according to the CSO’s latest figures. A survey of their rationale and resources would be interesting.outlined the challenge of returning to a country where house prices and rent are prohibitive, where Irish citizens are competing against international investment funds or wealthy non-resident buyers.believe they will never be able to buy a home, we are reminded that the traditional escape valves such as the, according to the new CSO figures.
Overall the numbers leaving dropped by 5 per cent, but, notably, the decrease in emigrant numbers to Australia was nearly triple that– 1,700 fewer than the year before. It’s not clear what those figures are telling us, apart from the reality that making a successful new life abroad was never easy. To quote Steve Guerin, a happily settled Australian resident for 13 years, the country isn’t the golden ticket many think it is.
“Life here still takes hard work, sacrifice and resilience … Housing is hard and raising a family isn’t cheap”. , but is careful to add that “there is a big difference between just living in Sydney and building a life here. And the housing costs are one of the biggest factors”.
House prices in Australia are now among the highest in the world – much higher even than Ireland’s, with a house price-to-income ratio of 9:2 for Australia compared to 6:2 in Ireland. Both Canada and the US also have higher ratios than Ireland’s, according to Statista research.
– which remains the top choice for emigrants – housing affordability is better but, city to city, London is on a par with Dublin . In the EU, Ireland is among the countries struggling with 20 per cent higher house price to income ratios than a decade ago, with Portugal, the Netherlands, Hungary and Luxembourg even less affordable, according to an EU Commission discussion paper.
In the meantime, for those who like to keep score, here are some world rankings: Ireland is 11th in the UN human development index ; seventh in the Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index, seventh in the world press freedom index, fifth in the global peace index, joint 12th in the Transparency International corruption perceptions index and 13th in the world happiness report . All of which tells us we’re not the best, but we’re not the worst.
That we’re pretty okay in many ways. And that if we can be really brave, energetic and resourceful like our emigrants always had to be then we could be great. What will you say when a child asks: ‘Why are we driving a vehicle that is killing our planet? ’Tesco worker sacked for taking bakery items before they became ‘free to staff’ loses unfair dismissal claimParakeets have Londoners in a flap and hunters loading their rifles
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