Moving to Ireland
Ireland. For families who don’t just want out, but want to land somewhere safe.
Neutral, English-speaking, far from Europe’s flashpoints. Good schools, home education as a constitutional right, interesting rules for wealth held abroad and a state that sits one level further away. At the end of it, a second passport may even come along. Ireland is not perfect. But for some families, a surprising amount falls into place.
Six reasons
It’s the combination
For every one of these six reasons there is a country somewhere that does it better. All six together you will find almost nowhere. So don’t read the list like a brochure. Read it like a checklist for your family.
- 01
Smaller state. Closer community.
The Irish state sits one level further away, and below it the community runs daily life. Only a referendum can change the Constitution. As a British or EU citizen you register with no authority when you arrive. Perhaps you want the butcher to know your children by name: small towns, clubs, local schools and neighbours who know who you are. A different life from London, Amsterdam, Stockholm or Brussels.
- 02
Neutral and in no military alliance
The reason at the top of most families’ lists: Ireland has no conscription, is not a member of NATO and lies on the western edge of Europe. Your children should live their own lives, not end up as cannon fodder for other people’s warmongering. That is no guarantee, and I promise you none. But it is a different starting point.
- 03
Home education as a constitutional right
If school does not work for your child, in Ireland the decision is yours. Home education is legal and protected by the Constitution. Sweden allows it only for exceptional reasons, and for families there this one sentence can be reason enough to move. Whether school or home education suits your children is something to talk through with Marc, who lives here with five children of his own.
- 04
Non-dom, the remittance basis, no wealth tax
Ireland is not a low-tax country, and I will not tell you it is. For international wealth it can still be interesting: the remittance basis for non-doms and the absence of a general wealth tax open up room to plan, as long as the structure is right from the start.
- 05
English-speaking state schools, free and close to home
Your children do not have to change country, friends and language all at once. State schools are free, local and teach in English. Children from Britain carry on in their own language; for children from Scandinavia or the Low Countries, the English they learned as a school subject becomes the language of everyday life, picked up in the classroom and on the pitch. Marc’s children play hurling today and did not want to go back.
- 06
An Irish passport, in the end
A passport is not a product you buy here. It is what can stand at the end of a real life in Ireland. How long the road through naturalisation will take in future is being decided by the Irish parliament right now. So your children do not grow up in Ireland for a passport; they grow up in Ireland. And with an Irish grandparent the road can be a different one altogether.
On its own, none of these six points is a sensation. Put together like this, you will hardly find them a second time in Europe: an English-speaking EU country where your family lives more safely and more freely, and can even end up with a second passport.
The reversal
Renters have a hard time in Ireland
Now for the point where most Irish dreams die. You have probably read the headlines about Ireland’s housing crisis. They are true. The crisis is real, and it does not stop at the Dublin city limits.
But now turn the whole thing around. You are coming with capital. And whoever comes with capital does not have to keep playing the hardest part of the Irish property market. The housing crisis is a rental crisis. You, though, are a buyer.
In New Ross the twelve-month median sale price is €230,000, and for existing homes in Waterford City it is €262,500. Median means: half of all sales were below that.
Ask someone who lives there
Marc tells you what a price in your area really means, which school suits your family and in what order to tackle things. You take the steps yourself.
Renting
The hardest part of arriving. What the nationwide shortage of rental homes means for your family in practice.
Buying
Buying a home in Ireland follows its own sequence: solicitor, contract and survey. Know it before you fall in love with a house.
Prices
Dublin and the south-east are two entirely different property markets. What family homes in Wexford, Waterford and Cork actually cost.
On the ground
The Ireland seminar in Cork
If you want to see Ireland before you decide: Perspektive Ausland, the German-language home of our network, holds its seminar on moving to Ireland in Cork, right in the region this site is about.
There in person: Marc Vogler, who lives here with his family, and Seán O'Quoi, who leads the excursions and the evenings.
Two families, two roads to Ireland
Services
What we take on
Between the decision and your children’s first day at school in Ireland lie a great many separate steps, and very few of them are pleasant. We take a large share of them off your hands, at fixed prices and ready to order online.
Company formation
from €3,470
Relocation package
€5,500
Your tax arrival and your practical arrival in one, with Marc as your Ireland guide.
Tax registration
€2,500
Registration with Revenue, your non-dom position from day one and your first tax return with it.
PPS number
€550
The number everything hangs on once you arrive, for every member of your family.
Bank accounts
Why your money as a non-dom needs accounts outside Ireland, and who in our network opens them.
Why Ireland?
The text where it all begins: why you are not looking for a better country but for a better life for your children, and why capital, of all things, is the key to it.
Who would you like to talk to?
Sebastian for tax, non-dom status and the road to Irish citizenship. Marc for the move to Ireland and setting up a business on the ground. Both consultations sit side by side on one page.