Cost of Living in Ireland Vs UK

lcom

Is there anyone out there who has lived in both Ireland and the UK recently. I'm having an ongoing argument with a friend of mine who lives in the UK who keeps telling me that the cost of living in the UK is substantially lower than that of Ireland. I travel quite a lot to the UK and other than rent, I can't find anything else that is hugely cheaper. My opinion is that overall, the cost of living in both countries is quite similar, however, the salaries in Ireland are much higher (London excluded of course).
I'd appreciate other opinions.

andrewh5

lcom wrote: »

Is there anyone out there who has lived in both Ireland and the UK recently. I'm having an ongoing argument with a friend of mine who lives in the UK who keeps telling me that the cost of living in the UK is substantially lower than that of Ireland. I travel quite a lot to the UK and other than rent, I can't find anything else that is hugely cheaper. My opinion is that overall, the cost of living in both countries is quite similar, however, the salaries in Ireland are much higher (London excluded of course).
I'd appreciate other opinions.

Ireland is far more expensive than the UK. VAT in the UK is 17.5% compared to our (soon to be) 21.5%. Gas & electricity are cheaper, food is far cheaper, toiletries are far cheaper, baby goods are far cheaper and alcohol is far cheaper. Rents are way cheaper. The only thing higher than here is petrol & diesel but we are not that far behind on that since the budget.

lcom

Personally, I find that eating out is almost the same. I can't comment on toiletries but my friends electricity bill is more than mine and he lives in a 1 bed apt and I live in a 3 bed house.

toomevara

Much cheaper living over here, the cost of living in general is about 15% lower at a rough guesstimate...stuff like groceries and eating out are markedly cheaper, as is clothing. I'm not talking about London though, which is roughly the same as Dublin, having lived in both cities. Much cheaper up north.

lcom

Personally, I find that eating out is almost the same. I can't comment on toiletries but my friends electricity bill is more than mine and he lives in a 1 bed apt in Manchester and I live in a 3 bed house in Dublin.

andrewh5

lcom wrote: »

Personally, I find that eating out is almost the same. I can't comment on toiletries but my friends electricity bill is more than mine and he lives in a 1 bed apt in Manchester and I live in a 3 bed house in Dublin.

Then he needs to shop around and change his supplier which he can do and we can't as we only have ESB :mad:

PiZaRR-0

Im living in London at the moment and pay is lower, tax in higher and rent is higher.

The way there tax system works means you automatically get taxed more in the UK, regardless to the fact Im not a UK citizen.

Like our tax is calculated by taking our % away from our tax free allowance.

In the UK its your salary minus allowance, then get %.

Drink is still cheaper, unless you're slap bang in the middle of leceiser square.

Even with that I paid 14 pounds, which is only about €16.50 now due to the pound getting VERY weak, its .83 now, it was 0.75 when I first arrived, for 2 pints, a gin and tonic and a vodka coke.

Thats still cheaper than Dublin.

Overall it balances out, but the pound is getting REALLY weak compared to the euro.

Sesame

Just moved back to Ireland after 4 years in UK.
Everyone was telling me how expensive I'd find Ireland when I got back, but to be honest, its not a huge difference. Although in some respects it is.
1. Eating out. Far cheaper in London. Reason being, there is far more choice of places. Really cheap, cheap, middling and expensive. By really cheap I mean greasy spoon caffs, something which doesn't really exist in Ireland I notice. I regularly had the most delicious beef stew freshly made for £3.50. By cheap, I mean where you can go for a nice dinner in an Indian (I miss those) with beer and all for £20. Also doesn't seem to exist here.
So, its not that Ireland is more expensive for food, just that they don't have the full range of price options.

2.Alcohol. Cheaper in the UK, both off-licences and pubs.

3. Rent. Probably slightly more in London than Irish cities, but still not a huge amount more.

4.Grocery shopping. cheaper in UK. This to me is also done to the UK having a bigger choice of grocery shops. Starting at the Aldi/lidl to Asda to Morrisons/Tesco to Sansburies (about same price as Dunnes/Tesco in Ireland I suppose) to M&S then to Waitrose. So a lot more competition too.

5. Going out. Taxis and would be more expensive clubs n the West end of course, but no one that lives in London really goes to these clubs. they are for tourists. Most places I went were free, and used a night bus (on hour every hour thruogh the night). So from living there, a night out was cheaper.

6. Salary. Better in the UK in my industry anyway (by about 50%)

7. Utilities. This is where you are stung. Council tax was about £150 a month for two of us. Water bill £20 a month. Then all usual gas, electrics, I found them to be a little cheaper than Ireland but we did live in a smaller space too so maybe that was it. Mobile bill and land line were very good value, there's a huge choice in the UK for these so I even managed to beat these down again by comparing rates.

8. Running a car. Miles cheaper in UK. Car much cheaper to buy (bought MX5 for £4200), tax and insurance hardly anything.

all the stars

Yeah...

simple example...
Bought fab pair of shoes while in UK = £35 i paid.
Price on these shoes was also in Euro €53

35£ = €41 and some change when converted directly.
Whats the other 13€ for ?? :mad:

Davidth88

Having lived in both Sesame has it spot on.

The cost of living is high in the UK because of things like the Council Tax which we don't have in Ireland. To put that in perspective , my mother's Council tax bill ( for an OAP living alone ) was 1200 pounds per year. Thats with hefty discounts.

The shopping was MUCH cheaper in the UK. Interestingly when I first moved here in 2001 I didn't notice the difference . Its only in the last 1-2 years I have noticed that things in the UK are hugely cheaper ( thousands of examples posted by various people already ).

There is basically no competition here in the supermarket front, you have the rip off Tesco or Dunnes ( both terrible ) , and the super rip off Superquinn ( quite nice ), and still the prevalance of the Musgraves based shops that are such a rip off as to be unreal ( but serve a purpose as a convenience store ).

Oh I forgot ALDI/Lidl, good value by and large , but very limited choice .

If ASDA ( Walmart ) came in here Tesco/Dunnes wouldn't know what had hit them !

In the pub trade if Witherspoons came here , again the big ' super pubs ' (like the Cafe insane ) wouldn't know what had hit them either.

I too really really really miss a good reasonably priced Indian restaurant !

andrewh5

The OPs writing about council tax are forgetting that lots of places here have management charges that are just as high. You also have the NHS in the UK - no paying to see a GP and no €90 per month on medication.

You can't compare London with Dublin either. The population of London is over 10 million!

Sesame

Good point about NHS, I maybe only used it twice though so didn't affect me much. (Except what what I probably paid to support them in council tax!).

Regarding management changes though. This isn't comparable to council tax. Everyone pays council tax, except those on welfare. and Management changes also exist in the UK for people living in managed properties in exactly the same way as they do in Ireland. Council tax is on top of that as well.

Council tax covers running of the council, council owned properties, refuse collections, street cleaning, fire stations, that sort of thing.

Davidth88

You also have the NHS in the UK - no paying to see a GP and no €90 per month on medication.

Very good point , never thought of that !

I so strongly believe that medical attention should be free at the point of delivery...

Mgmt fees, they also have them in the UK actually if you live in leaseholds.

Ohhh I forgot about water rates , I know some places here pay , but in the UK when I left I was paying about 400 quid a year.

Sesame , Council tax does not go to the NHS ( small point :-) ) it pays only for the local authorities/police/fire service etc.

Sesame

Meant to say income tax. Council tax on the brain!
But I did feel hard done by in that regard. The doctors surgeries are very modern well-run places, and obviously a lot of money was spent on them.
I should have visited more to get my monies worth.

andrewh5

Sesame wrote: »

The doctors surgeries are very modern well-run places, and obviously a lot of money was spent on them.
I should have visited more to get my monies worth.

They are far more professional than GPs here too. Decent, electronic record data which is easily transferred to other GPs or Primary Care Trusts if you change doctors. They also have immediate referral to consultants by email and computer generated prescriptions of proper prescription forms -none of that badly cut, poorly written photocopy rubbish. They make our GPs look like amateurs.

andrewh5

Davidth88 wrote: »

I so strongly believe that medical attention should be free at the point of delivery.

Absolutely! Good quality healthcare should be a right to all not a privilege of the few.

jonny68

andrewh5 wrote: »

Absolutely! Good quality healthcare should be a right to all not a privilege of the few.

agree totally..

This country is rapidly going down the tubes big time, it's an absolute rip off for everything, even with the recession prices haven't gone down except in some cases rent, time to get the fcuk out of here next year if things do not improve!!

Davidth88

This country is rapidly going down the tubes big time,

Ohh thats a little harsh, believe me this is still a very civilised place to live. Sure it has issues, but then again where doesn't ?

As this thread indicates our near neighbours ( my home country ) is hardly a utopia .

We need to keep bashing the people who are ripping us off , naming and shaming.

aquascrotum

It's easier to compare GB to RoI as salaries are higher in GB (and so comparable with RoI).....N.Ireland is it's own wee enclave though.

For instance...

My sister is living in Belfast in a 3-bed house in a nice part of the city, front and back garden and driveway - rent about £500/month.

Groceries - no question, cheaper in NI.

Booze - far cheaper

Eating out - we had a meal for 5 in a great Indian on the Dublin Road (Arkana for tikka lovers..) inc. 2 with starters, wine and beer for £90, less than £20/head. The last comparable Indian I bought in Drogheda (never mind Dublin) cost E70 for 2.

Utilities - gas and electric are comparable to RoI imo.

Telecoms and TV - far, far cheaper in UK/NI.

Water charges have been deferred in NI for the time being, in time they will come in though.

Instead of Council Tax, NI has "domestic rates". These are hefty enough - but then they dont have bin charges, recycling centres are free, public (council subsidised) leisure centres are everywhere. In addition it is quite likely that in order to pass water charges, the existing water charge element of the domestic rate will be removed.

As others have said, NHS is free - GP checkup is free, some prescriptions are free, a dentist checkup cost £12 the last time I was home.

Running a car - no question, again. No VRT, insurance is comparable, in my experience servicing costs are cheaper (I had to get a tyre changed - just a cheap and cheerful 15" tyre to get through the NCT before the car is sold. Cost of tyre in Armagh £24. Cost of same tyre in Drogheda E54.). Before I imported my car it cost me £110 a year to tax in NI. It costs me E600/year to tax it in RoI.

Not everything in RoI is a ripoff per say - I have sympathy with utility companies who have to run infrastructure over an island say 1/3 - 1/2 the size of GB but to serve a market less than a 10th of the size. But in terms of groceries and goods etc we're still having the arse ripped out of us, no question.

luckat

andrewh5 wrote: »

Then he needs to shop around and change his supplier which he can do and we can't as we only have ESB :mad:

Airtricity.

Dob74

lcom wrote: »

Is there anyone out there who has lived in both Ireland and the UK recently. I'm having an ongoing argument with a friend of mine who lives in the UK who keeps telling me that the cost of living in the UK is substantially lower than that of Ireland. I travel quite a lot to the UK and other than rent, I can't find anything else that is hugely cheaper. My opinion is that overall, the cost of living in both countries is quite similar, however, the salaries in Ireland are much higher (London excluded of course).
I'd appreciate other opinions.

I find the the UK cheaper with clothes, supermarkets, rent, insurance, cars, property and nearly all consumer items. We are being ripped off hear and probably always will. As for wages I find them pretty poor hear. And there heading south for everyone in the private sector. I think business want to pay Tseco wages and charge Brown Thomas prices.

Roydeboy

I am amazed how many of you think England or the UK is cheaper than Ireland! especially now the euro/pound are getting closer in value.

I have lived in both Ireland and the UK for 2 years a piece over the last 4 years. I have one child.
I am certain that over all the difference is minimal and I was a little more than marginally better off in Ireland. Childrens allowance and tax credits are far better, I paid less tax in Ireland. I did not have to pay council tax in ireland (here I pay £1300 a year! it is a rip off non means tested tax).
So VAT is slightly cheaper here, but on the whole scale of things it is irrelevant.
Childrens clothes - cheaper in Ireland (dunnes and Pennies!), nappies etc are the same.

I used to travel alot between the UK and Ireland and had many trips to belfast with work, it always broke the bank to go to the UK, in most of the UK/NI a sh1tty hotel will be minimum £70, I put people up in Bewleys in sandyford for 90 euro!
Parking at an airport, in dublin long stay official car park its only 8 euro a day, in bristol it almost 15 pounds a day
The M6 toll in the midlands/UK is £5 - the tunnel in dublin is 6 euro
Another example, compare beds in the UK and ireland _ Wayyyyy cheaper in ireland
I want to buy a solid fuel stove.. the cheapes I can get locally is £700 pounds, In Blackpool in Cork, I can get the same one for 299 euro!

lets look at a comparison graph

Dublin UK (Devon)
Rent for 3 bed house €1,400 €944.00
Electricity 16c per Kwh €0.15
Gas 7c per Kwh €0.03
Council Tax N/A €1,534.00
Mobile Phone Tariff/month €30.00
€0.00
Petrol/Litre €1.08 €1.18
Diesel/Litre €1.16 €1.29
Car insurance €450/year for 1.4 Litre petrol with full no claims bonus €283.20
pint of beer €2.64
Bottle of wine from supermarket €7.50 average €4.72
I Litre of Milk €1.14 €89.68
Loaf of Bread €1.29 €1.12
Fillet Steak from Butcher €5.50 €8.26
Chicken from Butcher €1.95 for chicken breast €2.36
Free range eggs (6 pack) €2.15 €1.79
€0.00
Average Main course in low budget Rest €18 €11.80
Steak fillet from Restaurant €23 €21.24
Indian Takeaway Main course €10.50 €7.08
Fish and chips takeaway ? €7.08
€0.00
Visit to Doctor (without HI) €60 €0.00
Visit to Dentist (without HI) €60 €0.00
airport parking long stay 6/day €14.16
National insurance % of salary 9.00%
tax as % of salary 18.00%

Roydeboy

And another thing!

The whole having a baby experience is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better in Ireland. Ask my wife about Holles Street and she goes all misty eyed with the love of the nurses and care there, over here, no comparison, They send you home 2 days after a C-Section! you have to pay £4 for a copy of an ultr sound scan and a fortune to park in their car parks.
Our Daughter has Downs, again the immediate care and assistance we got in Ireland was unreal, it has taken almost 11 months to get the same care set up over here!

If you are old over here, good luck to you! they will leave you waiting for years for a simple op, usually the person has deteriated so much by the time the op comes up they are too weak to recover.
If you need home help, they make you release equity in your home to pay for it.
The NHS may be free, but you will have to wait! so you need health insurance, and we are back to a two tier system again, just like Ireland

Upshot of my rant is , on the whole Ireland is a way better country to live in, In my humble opinion.

mcwhirter

lcom wrote: »

Is there anyone out there who has lived in both Ireland and the UK recently. I'm having an ongoing argument with a friend of mine who lives in the UK who keeps telling me that the cost of living in the UK is substantially lower than that of Ireland. I travel quite a lot to the UK and other than rent, I can't find anything else that is hugely cheaper. My opinion is that overall, the cost of living in both countries is quite similar, however, the salaries in Ireland are much higher (London excluded of course).
I'd appreciate other opinions.

The salaries are not higher here in the industry I work in, they are much higher in uk, also it depends on the exchange rate you are basing this on.

mcwhirter

Roydeboy wrote: »

And another thing!

The whole having a baby experience is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better in Ireland. Ask my wife about Holles Street and she goes all misty eyed with the love of the nurses and care there, over here, no comparison, They send you home 2 days after a C-Section! you have to pay £4 for a copy of an ultr sound scan and a fortune to park in their car parks.
Our Daughter has Downs, again the immediate care and assistance we got in Ireland was unreal, it has taken almost 11 months to get the same care set up over here!

If you are old over here, good luck to you! they will leave you waiting for years for a simple op, usually the person has deteriated so much by the time the op comes up they are too weak to recover.
If you need home help, they make you release equity in your home to pay for it.
The NHS may be free, but you will have to wait! so you need health insurance, and we are back to a two tier system again, just like Ireland

Upshot of my rant is , on the whole Ireland is a way better country to live in, In my humble opinion.

Disagree, uk is better.;)

Phototoxin

I agree. UK is better to live with the sole exception of the almost police-state wanabe government. Otherwise its fine.

I lived there for 3 years I want to get a job over there. (the fact that its across the sea and I'm trying to look from home he is hard) but I want to go back and will have no reservations doing so. Ireland's alright but so far behind and the government is not accountable enough.

lcom

mcwhirter wrote: »

The salaries are not higher here in the industry I work in, they are much higher in uk, also it depends on the exchange rate you are basing this on.

With the current exchange rate, salaries are much higher over here now. I've been looking at jobs in the IT industry. The pound is nearly the same value as euro now.

mcwhirter

lcom wrote: »

With the current exchange rate, salaries are much higher over here now. I've been looking at jobs in the IT industry. The pound is nearly the same value as euro now.

That is true at the moment, my salary is higher now but if we go back to the rate when the pound was worth 1.45 euros, my salary was less.

It is interesting that the shops which are UK based are still basing there rate at between 1.35-1.7. So it that respect it is still more expensive here. If you do all your shopping in the north on the other hand, it is the equivalent of having a pay increase of about 20%!!!! Maybe much more as it was already 15& cheaper up there on the old 1.45 rate.

lcom

mcwhirter wrote: »

That is true at the moment, my salary is higher now but if we go back to the rate when the pound was worth 1.45 euros, my salary was less.]

Who knows if it will ever go back to being 1.45 euros. It looks like at the moment, that the pound is going to get even weaker.

foggy_lad

Davidth88 wrote: »

Having lived in both Sesame has it spot on.

The cost of living is high in the UK because of things like the Council Tax which we don't have in Ireland. To put that in perspective , my mother's Council tax bill ( for an OAP living alone ) was 1200 pounds per year. Thats with hefty discounts.

The shopping was MUCH cheaper in the UK. Interestingly when I first moved here in 2001 I didn't notice the difference . Its only in the last 1-2 years I have noticed that things in the UK are hugely cheaper ( thousands of examples posted by various people already ).

There is basically no competition here in the supermarket front, you have the rip off Tesco or Dunnes ( both terrible ) , and the super rip off Superquinn ( quite nice ), and still the prevalance of the Musgraves based shops that are such a rip off as to be unreal ( but serve a purpose as a convenience store ).

Oh I forgot ALDI/Lidl, good value by and large , but very limited choice .

If ASDA ( Walmart ) came in here Tesco/Dunnes wouldn't know what had hit them !

In the pub trade if Witherspoons came here , again the big ' super pubs ' (like the Cafe insane ) wouldn't know what had hit them either.

I too really really really miss a good reasonably priced Indian restaurant !

if these places opened in ireland they would charge even more than superquin and tescos and cafe insane as people would be only too happy to pay more for the experience of shopping or drinking there! most irish people are real culchies behaving like they have just been to the BIG CITY when some new place opens and will pay anything to be seen there!

these expensive shops etc are not robbing/ripping anyone off they are simply shovelling up the cash that starstruck paddies are throwing away!

darc

"In the pub trade if Witherspoons came here , again the big ' super pubs ' (like the Cafe insane ) wouldn't know what had hit them either"


Wetherspoons bouight a premises on Capel st about 4 years ago and then decided not to proceed as the Irish market would not support their business model. (crap food, crap service, zero atmposphere) Cheapness always comes at a price!

Davidth88

Wetherspoons bouight a premises on Capel st about 4 years ago and then decided not to proceed as the Irish market would not support their business model. (crap food, crap service, zero atmposphere) Cheapness always comes at a price!

Really ?

The story I heard was the LVA Cartel basically objected to everything , in the end they gave up.

The food will never win any awards , but it's comprable to a lot of places around TBH. Crap service, ok there are already a lot of pubs in Dublin where the service is questionable . Zero atmosphere , to some extent I agree , they purchased a lot of old Woolworths and the pubs felt like ' beer supermarkets' , but now they seem ok.

Anyway you show me a pub in Dublin ( or Ireland ) where you can get a pint + a burger/chips for 6 euro.

milly4ever

i think wetherspoons is brilliant for food, and both food and drink are unbelievably cheap, meal +(alcoholic drink) for £5! it also has a family section which is good.

Hookey

Looks like the UK is going to drop VAT to 15% next year. Will be interesting to see if there's a knock-on effect here (you'll certainly see even more people shopping in the North, including me)? I'm convinced that if all the UK online etailers got their act together and started marketing in Ireland aggressively, it would kill Irish retail overnight.

bmaxi

Hookey wrote: »

Looks like the UK is going to drop VAT to 15% next year. Will be interesting to see if there's a knock-on effect here (you'll certainly see even more people shopping in the North, including me)? I'm convinced that if all the UK online etailers got their act together and started marketing in Ireland aggressively, it would kill Irish retail overnight.

I heard that on BBC news this morning, I'm sure the British Chancellor of the Exchequer is not Lenihans darling (sorry), at the moment. I'm not sure killing off the Irish retail sector is the best way to go, shake it up certainly but killing it off wouldn't help the conumer in the long run. What would help the consumer IMO, would be to stop filling Dail Eireann with wealthy businessmen, farmers and publicans.

lcom

I just checked the exchange rate and 1Euro is now 0.85p. For someone who is on 35K sterling salary in the UK, which would've been considered a reasonably good salary a few years back even by Irish standards, that now only equates to 41K Euro. If the UK decided to join the euro any time soon, the whole of the UK would find themselves on very low salaries by European standards.

A Dub in Glasgo

£35k is a very good salary

Jaysoose

bmaxi wrote: »

I heard that on BBC news this morning, I'm sure the British Chancellor of the Exchequer is not Lenihans darling (sorry), at the moment. I'm not sure killing off the Irish retail sector is the best way to go, shake it up certainly but killing it off wouldn't help the conumer in the long run. What would help the consumer IMO, would be to stop filling Dail Eireann with wealthy businessmen, farmers and publicans.

At least the britsh chancellor is trying to get things moving, lenihan is pissing on our legs and telling us its raining. The retailers/pubs in dublin have nobody to blame but themselves if they go under they have ripped off everybody from ireland and abroad for years, now its the goverments fault for putting up business rates but not their own fault for charging 5.50+ for a pint and 20+ for a crap steak for years. I had the pleasure of entertaining my missus's bros stag party over from england and they were more than a bit hacked off with the rice of drink and food. We went to TGI fridays and 3 of them sent back food and basically told the manager that they were robbing from them sending that '****' out at 23 euro. Pretty much to a man they will not be back if they cant help it.

lcom

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

£35k is a very good salary

I think you missed my point!

A Dub in Glasgo

lcom wrote: »

I think you missed my point!

Remind me again

bmaxi

Jaysoose wrote: »

At least the britsh chancellor is trying to get things moving, lenihan is pissing on our legs and telling us its raining. The retailers/pubs in dublin have nobody to blame but themselves if they go under they have ripped off everybody from ireland and abroad for years, now its the goverments fault for putting up business rates but not their own fault for charging 5.50+ for a pint and 20+ for a crap steak for years. I had the pleasure of entertaining my missus's bros stag party over from england and they were more than a bit hacked off with the rice of drink and food. We went to TGI fridays and 3 of them sent back food and basically told the manager that they were robbing from them sending that '****' out at 23 euro. Pretty much to a man they will not be back if they cant help it.

The retail sector is one of the largest employers in the country, if it takes too big a knock it will have a huge effect on employment. This creates a vicious circle of, fewer customers= job losses = less money in circulation = fewer customers and so on. I am not defending the profiteering that has gone on and is still going on but when times were good, people were prepared to pay the prices without question rather than shop around. This created a smug complacency in the retail sector. As far as the publicans (spit) go, explain to me why these places that charge exorbitant prices are packed to the gills most of the time. I'm not a drinker but I do occasionaly visit pubs and it never ceases to amaze me the way people will pay any amount to get a drink and the closer it gets to closing, the greater the frenzy becomes.
I'm not a fan of Lenihan or Fianna Fail and I do think that he is going the wrong way about it by reducing people's spending power but I don't envy him trying to dig the way out of this mess regardless as to who put us in it.

lcom

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Remind me again

The closer sterling gets to the value of the Euro, the worse it is to be earning sterling.

A Dub in Glasgo

Is that really a point though? I earn in sterling therefore my spending power is sterling and the cost of living is in sterling. As I said, £35k sterling is a very good wage. What is the point in converting that to Euro and comparing it against the cost of living in some other country?

lcom

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Is that really a point though? I earn in sterling therefore my spending power is sterling and the cost of living is in sterling. As I said, £35k sterling is a very good wage. What is the point in converting that to Euro and comparing it against the cost of living in some other country?

Of course it matters....If sterling is weak, importing to the UK becomes very expensive, and if you change over to the euro, which could happen, salaries in the UK will become the lowest in europe. I could never apply for a job in the UK because it would mean that I'd take a huge drop in salary because of the current exchange rate. Things arent cheap enough in the UK to compensate such a drop in salary.

aquascrotum

lcom wrote: »

I just checked the exchange rate and 1Euro is now 0.85p. For someone who is on 35K sterling salary in the UK, which would've been considered a reasonably good salary a few years back even by Irish standards, that now only equates to 41K Euro. If the UK decided to join the euro any time soon, the whole of the UK would find themselves on very low salaries by European standards.

Irrelevant - the salary is dicated by the cost of living in that economy. The cost of living in Ireland is high, so salaries are high to compensate. It's only a good thing if you're able to make your money in a country paying high salaries due to high cost of living, but are able to live and spend in a country with a low cost of living. Living in NI and working in RoI is the ideal scenario.

Dub in Glasgow is right - £35k is bloody good. I earned £28k in NI a year ago. The equivalent position in RoI to have the same lifestyle was E43k. Exchange rate then was about 70p so even then it was 40k by comparison.

If I was on £35k in the UK and was job hunting in Ireland, you'd be looking at probably E55k+ for a comparable living standard.

blackberer

It is a fallacy that the cost of living is higher in Ireland compared to the UK..petrol,rents,clothing,groceries....I would challenge anyone suggest something they can purchase in the UK cheaper than in Ireland,apart perhaps big second hand cars.I parked my car at Bristol airport for a DAY a while back at a cost of £32!!!!(In Dublin you can park and fly for €4 per day!)

A Dub in Glasgo

blackberer wrote: »

It is a fallacy that the cost of living is higher in Ireland compared to the UK..petrol,rents,clothing,groceries....I would challenge anyone suggest something they can purchase in the UK cheaper than in Ireland,apart perhaps big second hand cars.I parked my car at Bristol airport for a DAY a while back at a cost of £32!!!!(In Dublin you can park and fly for €4 per day!)

Almost 3 years on and this pops back up.

I cannot find any reference to a £32 fee for 24 hours in Bristol. You are telling us that it is €4 for the day at Dublin Airport in the comparable car park.

24 hour short term car park

Bristol Airport - £25
Dublin Airport - €40

Have you missed a zero off your price at Dublin?

blackberer

https://parking.bristolairport.co.uk/bookparking/CarParking/CarParkingAvailabilityPage.aspx

Book your car in here for 24 hrs

http://www.bewleyshotels.com/dublin_airport/?r=3759275&gclid=CLbGoYm3vakCFQod4Qodln8JfA

..and book your car in here,
ok fair enough,you need to take a complinentary
5-min bus ride in Dublin.

Come to think of it,it took me about 15 mins to walk to the terminal at
Bristol and there were VERY few car-parking spaces available..
and this at 6 in the am!!

Looks like you re being taken for a ride over there..
wages were pretty crap too when I was there..!

mcwhirter

blackberer wrote: »

It is a fallacy that the cost of living is higher in Ireland compared to the UK..petrol,rents,clothing,groceries....I would challenge anyone suggest something they can purchase in the UK cheaper than in Ireland,apart perhaps big second hand cars.I parked my car at Bristol airport for a DAY a while back at a cost of £32!!!!(In Dublin you can park and fly for €4 per day!)

Ikea is cheaper in uk even with price reductions here.

blackberer

No,wrong again I'm afraid!!

..and all this waffle about Lidl and Aldi.
just compare their weekly bulletins..
even the wine is cheaper in Ireland
WITHOUT conversion!!

I just wish people would STOP
with this obvious misinformation.

I mean I'm beginning to wonder if there is some sort of conspiricy
going here,to keep the Brits out ofIreland or something!!

mcwhirter

blackberer wrote: »

No,wrong again I'm afraid!!

..and all this waffle about Lidl and Aldi.
just compare their weekly bulletins..
even the wine is cheaper in Ireland
WITHOUT conversion!!

I just wish people would STOP
with this obvious misinformation.

I mean I'm beginning to wonder if there is some sort of conspiricy
going here,to keep the Brits out ofIreland or something!!

Any proof? It was more expensive for most goods the last time I checked which was yesterday.