If you live and work in Ireland for 5 yrs you can become Irish as well as British, and effectively get your EU rights back. If I was younger, I'd be very tempted. Of course this door may not be open for ever with united Ireland on the horizon. If you don't do it, you may end up replying "I wish I had" to an identical Q to this on HN in 20 yrs time ;)
I’m quite familiar with Ireland (I’ve lived there), and the Irish government’s process for citizen applications. Hard no from me for various reasons. It’s why I said “other than Ireland”.
I have other options though and I’m actively exploring them. But unsurprisingly none are “easy” :-)
Care to spill the beans on why "Hard no?". I have to say that seeing the way the UK is going, (or should I say England since the rest of the UK probably will break off before long, Scotland for sure) , Ireland looks tempting to me. I'd worry about anti-English sentiment there. People bitch about the Irish health service but NHS probably no better now it seems to me.
I regularly suffer homophobia. (I still visit regularly). I’ve been spat at, intimidated on public transport, stared at, pointed at, ignored in cafes etc. Never experienced that anywhere in the UK…or anywhere else I’ve traveled and lived.
Your concerns about anti English sentiment are valid. I got tired of the “we’re just joking” excuse.
The housing crisis is extreme. Foreigners often think it can’t be that bad. It’s 10x worse than you think.
Car centric society (understandable - it’s been built that way).
Similar issues to the UK when it comes to landlord politicians, housing policies, healthcare, transport, prices etc.
Hard to make true friends. That’s from my friends who have lived there over 10 years and are very sociable people.
I could go on but it’ll be opinion and not direct experience and I don’t want to offend any Irish people reading this.
Thank you for taking time to reply :) I'm very sorry you had that experience especially homophobia. After asking the reasons, I wondered if you'd come back and say you were non-white , which seems to be not be fun to be particularly in some rural parts of Ireland. I know an Indian guy who was happy in Dublin last time I spoke to him... but have heard horror stories too.
I have a number of lovely Irish friends. Some living here in England, some I met in USA. At the same time, if people from a minority group are having a hard time in Ireland, I think its fair to call that out and its not an insult to the Irish in general. Of course, Britain was very homophobic in the not so distant past too.
Yeah Ireland does actually seem more car-centric than England, partly just comes of being less densely populated (which is one of the nice things).
My impression is housing crisis even worse in Ireland then England. England at least has affordable regional cities especially in Midlands and North.
One thing I really missed when going to Ireland on holiday, was the English Rights of Way legislation. We have clear public footpaths here, whereas in Ireland, access and relationships with landowners seems more sketchy.
However, for us English, and our kids, our own country seems to be going completely mad, and Ireland is an obvious way to have an insurance policy a.k.a EU passport. Then again, looks like a lot of EU countries are going a bit mad right now. I'm not convinced that the EU people were sad to exit from, will be the same sort of EU in 20 yrs time.
Not saving enough when younger
Not moving to Europe when it was easier to do so (I’m British)
Oh well. Life is too short to dwell on such things. You can only change the future, not the past.