The firm I work for wants to send me for a couple of years to Ireland to stay at a customer’s site. They are located in Cabinteely near Dublin.
Anyone know the place? Is it safe to raise kids there?
I’ve only been there a few times on visit - but the answer is yes.
Due to tax laws Ireland has drawn a lot of IT companies to the Dublin area, so every major big tech company you can think of has a presence there. Most have their EU headquarters in or near Dublin or at least their major tech support site, which means there’s a bunch of people from all over the world (mostly Europeans) working in the tech field there.
This has brought a boom to the Irish economy and in particular the area around Dublin - which is a wonderful city, I might add. I’m sure there’s still run down areas and poor people there. But it’s not the US and there were nowhere where I felt unsafe walking at night - in the better parts of the city/country where tech workers like you would live, I’m sure we’re talking nice clean suburbian settings.
I have a friend who lived there and worked for Creative just a few years back. I’ll ask him, if you have specific questions and no one here offers better answers.
Edit: Most definitely safer than Israel ;-)
Cabinteely is located in the South East of the county, an area which is generally regarded as one of the more desirable to live in (hence property prices are quite high and the community is well-established). It’s pretty close to Dun Laoghaire, a large seaside town that has a DART rail link to the city centre and loads of amenities. A couple of minutes drive and you’re in Wicklow, regarded (by its inhabitants, typically, but nevertheless) as the garden county of Ireland.
I’d say it’s a fairly good place to raise kids - plenty of green space and so on. Perfectly safe as well.
Not if you don’t want them to acquire an Irish accent. :-)
That might be interesting, actually. When they speak Hebrew, they’ll speak it with your accent, but when they speak English, they’ll sound like all the other Irish kids running around.
Cabinteely is a perfectly safe area, fine for kids, and the Irish education system, though there are more problems in rural areas, is quite highly regarded.
The only thing to be aware of really is that Ireland is an expensive place to live, high cost of food, high cost of gas compared to America, very high cost of going out, you’re looking at at least €5 for a pint, housing is also expensive although prices are dropping at the moment. I’d be wanting a hefty raise if I was moving in to Ireland.
I was sort of joking about the safety issue. I just want to make sure its not some slum suburb of Dublin. Hanzii - I would very much like to have any advice your friend can give on the place. Specifically where I should look for housing for a family of four and what sort of educational facilities they have there (kindergarten and grade A).
I know the cost of living is much higher there. HR are currently preparing a new contract which should cover all of that. If it doesn’t I’ll just stay here. Its not like we are lacking with work right now (knock on wood).
I had a mate who lived in Cabinteely opposite the CornelsCourt shopping centre. Nice big houses, lots of au-pairs around for the kids, and reasonably quiet. Their kids went to a French school in nearby Foxrock, so I can’t comment on the local schooling, but it’s a posh enough district.
www.daft.ie will give you an idea for rent. You’ll need to look for lettings in Dublin South ->Dublin 18.
www.myhome.ie is much the same thing, but you can filter to “Cabinteely” once you select Dublin South.
Rent will probably cost you ~1500-1800 Euro for a decent 3-bed house with a fair-sized garden.
Good luck with the promotion!
Thanks a lot. Does 3 bed mean 2 rooms where people sleep + living room? Thats what it means here, and I rather have a room for each kid.
Thanks, Its not really a promotion. They just need someone to be there and I’m up for some change in life.
Generally three beds mean 3 bedrooms, living room, kitchen, 1-2 bathrooms, and sometimes a dining room as well. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a 4-bed house in Cabinteely, but they’re less common, and more expensive.
Then 3 beds is what we need. Funny how things are defined in different places.
I’m not Irish, but I AM familiar with Dublin, Ohio. Somehow I get the feeling that’s not what you meant, though :P
He lived there with his wife for four years, but that was before he had kids. He’s checking with some colleagues still there and promised to get back to me.
I lived in Dublin for three and a half year. Nice place to visit, sometimes insane housing prices[1], and the monsoon period lasts from the first day of January till the end of December. You might get a token day of snow, just to make you feel special :)
Eating out was cheap back then. The Euro didn’t change it too much.
[1]3-4 room houses in northern Dublin (Castleknock, Carpenterstown and thereabouts) could reach 1.4 million punt. That would be around 2 million dollars (rough guess - the punt does not exist anymore).
So this is moving ahead. Did you happen to hear from your friend?
No I didn’t.
He promised me to ask some of the people still living there, but he never came back to me.
Sorry, I forgot too.
I’ll ask again, but since he was currently laid off together with the rest of Creatives European employees, he might be more focused on other stuff… and might not know anybody living there anymore, since they have no job either.
… but the good news is, that I bet a bunch of cheap rents just became avaliable.
Thats too bad. Hopefully he finds something else soon.
So I am now at the contract negotiation phase. I’m trying to get some idea on expenses in Ireland, but maybe the Irish don’t like to talk about such things or I suck in googling cause I can’t find anything. What I need to know is stuff like basic expenses for a family of 4 - food, electricity and clothing. For example, 700 Euros worth of food is more then enough. I have no idea what to expect there.
So Irishman - please help a dirty foreigner come over and steal your jobs.
Isn’t DrCrypt up in those parts?
you want grocery costs?
i made a throwaway account on http://www.tesco.ie website.
Customer ID is 30401221
[email protected]
password: asdfasdf
These prices don’t seem to be too off: