If Ireland, then here.

The priest came up to us on his bicycle. Unannounced. Then he sat there, drank tea and stayed for two hours.

That was 2014, in Lismore in County Waterford, a town of a little over a thousand people. I had moved there shortly before with six children. And somewhere between that afternoon and the Sunday roast in a gastropub run by a Texan couple, I understood what I am really looking for when I look for a place for my family.

Places where a person still turns up as a person.

Because once you have decided on Ireland, the next decision is only just beginning: where in Ireland should your family actually live? Everyone knows Dublin. Perhaps Cork as well. After that, for many families from Britain, the Netherlands or Scandinavia, the map empties surprisingly fast. You can move to the wild Atlantic coast, to Kerry, to Galway, to somewhere near Dublin, to a cottage somewhere in the midlands.

I would look in the South East again today.

By that I mean a fairly precisely defined part of the country: from Gorey and Wexford via Rosslare along the coast to Waterford and Dungarvan, on through Youghal to Cork and Kinsale, plus the river valleys inland around New Ross, Lismore, Fermoy and Mallow on the Blackwater.

The South East does not win on every single criterion, and it doesn't need to. Kilkenny is drier than Wexford. Carrick-on-Suir is cheaper. Carlow is closer to an airport. In the west you will find more dramatic landscapes, and Dublin beats the South East comfortably on flights. But a family does not live in a league table. It lives every day with the sum of its decisions: a house with room for the children, schools, doctors, shops, nature, people. Perhaps the sea on the doorstep. Within Ireland, less rain rather than more. And if the life you are leaving is in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, it is rather pleasant when the Continent stays within reach.

That is exactly why I keep ending up in the South East. The relatively dry side of Ireland is large. The part that is relatively dry, lies on the sea and at the same time has a car ferry to the European continent is small.

That is where I would look.

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The drier Ireland

Ireland is still Ireland. It rains. Let's get that on the table straight away: if your idea of the perfect new home is three hundred days of sunshine, warm evenings and breakfast on the terrace in January, you should fly south, not to Ireland.

But within Ireland, where you live makes a considerable difference. Rosslare gets 880 millimetres of rain a year. Wexford is at 993 millimetres, Waterford at 1,008. The Irish national average is 1,288 millimetres.

And then it gets interesting: Bunclody is also in County Wexford, and there 1,305 millimetres fall. Bunclody is therefore even slightly wetter than the Irish average, while Rosslare, in the same county, is at 880 millimetres. That is why the county boundary only interests me up to a point when I look for a place to live. The micro-location counts, closeness to the coast counts, the actual spot counts. Twenty or thirty kilometres can change your everyday Ireland.

For me, rain is no trivial statistic. If you are on a fortnight's holiday, you can spend a rainy Wednesday in the pub. If you live there with your children, weather is everyday life. The dog has to go out. The children want to go out. You have a garden, you want to go to the sea.

That is why, in a country that is wet anyway, I would choose the drier part of my own accord.

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Dungarvan and the Blackwater Valley

Dungarvan shows the same mix on a slightly bigger scale. West Waterford is no culinary no-man's-land: you have restaurants, pubs, local producers, the sea, and a landscape where a few minutes later you are back among fields and small villages.

For me, Dungarvan is therefore an important point on the map: you can live very rurally without your whole life having to become rural. I knew that from Lismore. In our town life was small, Centra, butcher, chipper, the big shop had to be planned. But Dungarvan was there. The coast was there. Cork was within reach. The world did not end at the town sign. That balance is exactly what I would look for again.

From the coast the region leads into the Blackwater Valley, and so into the part of Ireland where I lived myself. Lismore lies there. The River Blackwater runs through a green, old cultivated landscape of large estates, small villages and country roads.

And this of all areas is getting some rather prominent new neighbours. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have bought Strancally Castle in County Waterford. The estate lies on the Blackwater and covers 440 acres; its value is estimated at 20 to 30 million euros. And Zuckerberg is not the only billionaire landing in this small part of Ireland: James Dyson bought nearby Ballynatray House in 2024.

Of course that proves nothing at all. I would never say: two billionaires are buying houses, so you have to buy there too. Zuckerberg is looking for an estate with a budget that has little to do with the budget of an ordinary family.

What I find interesting is the geography. People who can afford a house practically anywhere in the world are landing in the Blackwater Valley. And I understand why. I was there long before them. Mine wasn't 440 acres, though. I had four. Plus six children. And one bus a day to Dungarvan.

That is probably the less glamorous version of the same choice of location. But that is exactly why I like the story: the Blackwater Valley works on completely different levels. You can own a castle there. You can live in Lismore. You can buy a family house outside a small village. And you always get the same landscape, the same small villages and the same closeness to the Waterford coast.

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Houses in the South East

Ireland has a housing crisis, and it does not disappear because we like the South East. The rental market can be difficult, and good houses are not available without limit. Anyone who arrives expecting to view ten perfect properties on Friday and rent one of them on Monday may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

When you buy, the South East becomes more interesting. New Ross sits at a purchase price of €230,000; for existing homes in Waterford city the figure is €262,500. Gorey is a special case within our corridor, because the town already sits on the edge of the Dublin commuter belt. That is why I would never name a single price for the whole South East. Location changes the price just as much as the house itself.

But that opens up options for families with capital. You can decide whether you want to be closer to the sea, whether you want more land, whether you want to live in a town or are looking for a small village, whether Rosslare matters especially, or whether you would rather go further west towards Dungarvan, Ardmore and the Blackwater.

The property follows your life. I think that order is decisive.

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The catch: flying beyond Britain

The South East has one clear weakness, and I would never hide it: flights beyond Britain.

To Britain, Cork is well served: London Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted and Manchester every day, and a handful of other British airports several days a week or more. Further afield it thins out. Amsterdam has a daily KLM flight, Brussels is served from Charleroi two or three times a week, and Scandinavia has no direct flight at all. Anyone who flies to the Nordics or around the Continent often will therefore use Dublin regularly, and depending on where you live that means roughly ninety minutes to two and a half hours in the car.

If you fly to Copenhagen on Monday, come back on Tuesday and have to be in Stockholm again by Thursday, I would probably not recommend the South East to you. At some point you will hate the drive to Dublin. That is the price of this region.

It works better for a family that really moves to Ireland. If the centre of your life stays in Britain or on the Continent and Ireland is mainly meant to be your new address, there are more practical places. But if your life really moves to Ireland, the sums change. Then most days are not travel days. Then what counts is how your life feels on all the other days.

The region stretches between its two gateways: Rosslare Europort in the east, Cork Airport in the west. No town in the region is more than 80 minutes from one of the two.

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Advice on choosing where to live

Once Ireland has become concrete for your family, I would plan your future life first and choose the point on the map afterwards.

How old are your children? School or home education? How often do you need to be back in Britain or on the Continent? Do you want to buy, or rent first? Would you like to live in a town or with land? How important is the sea to you? How much driving do you want in daily life? Do you need Cork Airport regularly? How important is Rosslare?

I can give you my own experience of life with six children in Lismore just as much as my experience today with families who live in the South East and have bought property there.

By the end you should know whether this part of Ireland suits your family and which places we should look at concretely for your new life.

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And why not Dublin?

First, the reason that lies beneath the choice of place and is seldom spoken: in Ireland everyday life is decided one level further down than at home, and in a small town you notice it daily. Smaller state, closer community.

The question comes up in almost every conversation, and it deserves an answer of its own without shortcuts: Why not Dublin.

And what life in a small town in this region really feels like, with everything that can go wrong: my year in Lismore.