Ireland or England? Residence, housing and costs, compared honestly
The same language, similar weather, an hour’s flight apart. For a British family the question is not whether you may live in Ireland. It is whether Ireland beats staying put: on rent, child benefit and, above all, tax.
If you live in England and think about Ireland, you are weighing the place you know against the one next door: the same language, similar weather, an hour’s flight, and people a lot like you on both islands. The move is easy on paper. Whether it pays is decided by a handful of numbers, and the biggest is not the rent but how each country taxes a family with capital. The English figures are for England; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland differ in places. Readers from Scandinavia or the Low Countries weighing England against Ireland will find a passage of their own in the first section.
Residence: the Common Travel Area, and a visa for everyone else
For British citizens this part is short. Under the Common Travel Area, British and Irish citizens may move freely and live in either country, work, study, vote in certain elections and use social welfare and health services. You need no visa, no permit and no residence card for Ireland. The arrangement rests on the domestic law of both countries and a memorandum of 2019, not on a treaty; it came through Brexit unchanged, but it is an arrangement, not a guarantee. Details are on our page on the Common Travel Area. One limit concerns mixed families: the Common Travel Area moves only British and Irish citizens, so a partner of another nationality needs their own permission in Ireland.
For readers from the EU, the EEA or Switzerland, the Nordics and the Benelux included, the picture is reversed. Ireland is an EU member and free movement applies. According to the state information service Citizens Information, as a citizen of the EEA or Switzerland you need no visa, no registration with the immigration authorities and no residence card. Beyond three months you must work, be self-employed, study or have enough money and comprehensive health insurance for your family; for a family with capital, that last point is the route. The United Kingdom, since Brexit, is a different case: its page for visitors from the EU and Switzerland allows holidays and short trips on an electronic travel authorisation (ETA); to work there for longer than six months you need a visa. The most common route is the Skilled Worker visa: under the government’s rules you need a job offer from an employer approved by the Home Office and a salary of at least £41,700 a year or the going rate for your occupation, if higher. Whether any route is open to you at all is shown by the government’s visa check.
What that costs adds up fast. The application fee from outside the country is £819 per person for up to three years, and partners and children pay the fee for the same length of time. On top comes the Immigration Health Surcharge: £1,035 per adult per year, £776 a year for children under 18. For a family with two adults and two children and a three-year visa, that means:
| Item | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Application fees | 4 × £819 | £3,276 |
| Health surcharge, adults | 2 × £1,035 × 3 years | £6,210 |
| Health surcharge, children | 2 × £776 × 3 years | £4,656 |
| Total | £14,142, about €16,900 |
Source: GOV.UK, Skilled Worker visa: How much it costs; Immigration Health Surcharge: How much you have to pay; converted at the ECB reference rate of 2 November 2026 (€1 = £0.8358). As of: retrieved 6 November 2026.
The conversion uses the ECB reference rate of 2 November 2026 (€1 = £0.8358), and every further euro figure next to a pound amount on this page uses the same rate. In Ireland the same line reads: zero euro, no application.
Housing: rents and house prices
On housing, the two countries are closer than many expect. The Irish tenancy regulator, the RTB, reports in its Rent Index for the first quarter of 2026 a national standardised average rent of €1,839 for new tenancies and €1,513 for existing ones. The Office for National Statistics gives an average rent for England in September 2026 of £1,466, about €1,754.
The direction differs too. In Ireland, rents on new tenancies rose by 9.1 per cent on the year in the first quarter of 2026, according to the RTB, after seven quarters between 4.7 and 5.9 per cent. The RTB links this to the new rent rules, which since 1 March 2026 allow the rent to be reset to market level between two tenancies, but considers it too early to say for certain. In England the rise was 4.0 per cent in the year to September 2026, according to the ONS. In Ireland, then, anyone who takes over an existing tenancy pays clearly less on average than a new tenant, and those are exactly the homes that rarely come onto the market.
Two caveats: the RTB separates new and existing tenancies, while the ONS averages across all private tenancies. And neither figure says whether you find a home at all; in Ireland that is precisely the bottleneck, nationwide. What it means for a family arriving is on our page on renting in Ireland.
Buying shows a similar picture. The Irish statistics office, the CSO, reports a median price of €400,000 for a home in the twelve months to August 2026, ranging from €685,000 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to €199,000 in Longford. In England the average price in August 2026 was £294,000 according to the ONS, about €351,800. Here too: a median and an average are different measures, and neither national figure says much about the region where you would search. What a family home costs in Ireland’s south-east is shown on our prices page.
Inflation and everyday costs
Prices are currently rising faster in Ireland. The CSO’s Consumer Price Index stood 4.1 per cent above the previous year in September 2026; housing and energy rose most, by 9.5 per cent. In the United Kingdom the Consumer Prices Index rose by 3.5 per cent in the same month.
A family month in Ireland, item by item, is on our page on the cost of living in Ireland. For the comparison with England, the supermarket shelf matters less than the big items: renting or buying, residence and tax.
Income and family
On the minimum wage, the UK is currently ahead in euro terms. In Ireland a minimum wage of €14.15 an hour has applied since 1 January 2026 for employees aged 20 and over; a rise to €14.94 from 1 January 2027 has been announced and still needs legislation. In the United Kingdom the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over has been £12.71 since April 2026, about €15.21, and rises to £13.21 in April 2027.
On child benefit, Ireland is more generous as soon as there is more than one child. Irish Child Benefit is €140 a month for every child, with no test of income or contribution record. British Child Benefit pays £27.05 a week for the eldest child and £17.90 for each further child, about €140 and about €93 a month. And above an individual income of £60,000 the High Income Child Benefit Charge starts to claw it back; above £80,000 it is repaid in full. Ireland has no such clawback.
Tax for a family with capital
For families with wealth from the sale of a business or property, this is the section with the biggest difference. Staying in England means being taxed on your worldwide income and gains as they arise. According to HMRC’s helpsheet HS266, the remittance basis was abolished on 6 April 2025. In its place came the FIG regime: relief for foreign income and gains in the first four years of UK residence, and only after at least ten consecutive tax years of non-residence. For a family that has always lived in Britain, it does not apply at all. Inheritance tax now follows residence too: according to HMRC’s inheritance tax manual, anyone resident in the UK for at least 10 of the last 20 tax years is in scope with their worldwide estate, and that does not end the day you leave. After ten to thirteen years of residence the tail runs for at least three tax years, and it grows by a year for each further year of residence, up to ten.
Moving to Ireland opens a different door. The Irish tax administration describes on its page on domicile the remittance basis: anyone tax resident in Ireland but not domiciled there pays Irish tax on foreign income only to the extent that it is brought into Ireland. You keep your domicile of origin, Revenue explains, unless there is clear evidence that you have made a new country your permanent home. And one detail matters to British readers in particular: according to Revenue’s tax manual 05-01-21, the remittance basis has applied to UK-source income arising since 1 January 2008, and to UK-source gains on disposals since 20 November 2008. It does not apply to pay for work done in Ireland. How it works day to day and where the traps lie is on our page on non-dom taxation.
For your sums: in England the worldwide charge is the rule, in Ireland a non-domiciled family has a route around it that does not expire after four years. What the UK still claims after you leave belongs in the plan before the first packing box.
Health
At the doctor the logic differs as well. In England anyone on a visa pays the health surcharge to use the NHS. According to GOV.UK, UK nationals ordinarily resident in Ireland have state healthcare there on the same basis as an Irish citizen, and those who move abroad permanently may lose free NHS care. In Ireland you pay no surcharge, but some services, such as an adult’s visit to the GP, cost money directly, and many families take out private health insurance. How the Irish system is built is on our page on healthcare in Ireland; why a deadline from the date of your move matters for private insurance is explained on the page on insurance.
Who chooses what
The answer depends less on a single number than on your situation:
- You bring capital and need no employer on the ground. Then almost everything speaks for Ireland: no permit for British citizens, a taxation of foreign income that does not end after four years, and child benefit without a clawback.
- Your career, your clients or your children’s schooling are anchored in England. Then staying is a realistic choice, with a higher minimum wage and rents of a similar order, and the UK’s worldwide taxation as the price.
- You want to keep a door into the EU. Then Ireland is the route: an Irish passport, at the end of a real life there, makes you an EU citizen, and British citizens keep the right to live in Britain alongside it.
- You have several children. Then child benefit counts: €140 per child in Ireland against a lower rate from the second child in England, and none at all above £80,000 of income.
Anyone who looks at Ireland seriously ends up looking at a region, not a country. Why we think Ireland’s south-east is a family’s best choice is set out there. And if you want to go through your sums with someone who made the move with his own family, book a consultation with Marc, our Ireland guide.