Sick of this country

The housing situation isn't that bad. It's probably better than the UK and definitely better than ireland. When I moved to Dusseldorf I rented a huge place in the city centre for the same price as my tiny apt in kildare.

It's getting harder to find places in city centres but if you're willing to have a short commute it gets a lot cheaper. There's a town called Mulheim near here. Very cheap to live in. Locals refer it it as a large town. It has 100k people there.

Check out the prices there. https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/de/nordrhein-westfalen/muelheim-an-der-ruhr/wohnung-mieten

Edit to add: check out this place. It's small and needs furnishing but it can be rented for 365 a month inc heating. Can you imagine that price anywhere in Ireland?

https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/143405491?referrer=RESULT_LIST_LISTING&navigationServiceUrl=%2FSuche%2Fcontroller%2FexposeNavigation%2Fnavigate.go%3FsearchUrl%3D%2FSuche%2Fde%2Fnordrhein-westfalen%2Fmuelheim-an-der-ruhr%2Fwohnung-mit-einbaukueche-mieten%3FenteredFrom%253Dresult_list%26exposeId%3D143405491&navigationHasPrev=true&navigationHasNext=true&navigationBarType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=f16b249f-a1a2-3a2e-9aad-afbb6511b87f&searchType=district#/

Floorboards is really unusual. But I'd say about 20% of them come with kitchens. I was surprised when I saw all the photo's of kitchens without anything in them. I wasn't arsed buying a kitchen so i rented a place with one. And went to ikea for most of my furniture. Over the course of my first year it's still a lot cheaper than renting in ireland.

Would make you wonder if there is any point working in this country when you see the **** that is going on.

There is welfare fraud anywhere welfare exists. And he's been caught.

The fact is there is a job for everyone in this Country who wants one, which means taxes going out in jobseekers is at an all time low. So of course its worthwhile working, don't make the distinction over the odd fraudulent scumbag.

P.S. we can't remove EU citizens, except over criminal activity. I'm quite certain there are Irish citizens living in other EU states who aren't supporting themselves either. That's the whole point of the EU and the positives outweigh the negatives.

We could do more to reduce it.

A man in Cork claimed his father's pension and his own JSA for 33 years.

Also, there are close to 40,000 construction workers on the Live Register in a housing crisis.

Do small time landlords in Germany get taxed 52% on their rental income? That's an issue here for someone renting out one or two houses.

Employee PRSI is 4% here, and approx 20% in DE.

Now, in DE, the PRSI covers:

(1) Health insurance (unlike here, where health is mainly tax-financed)

(2) State Pension

(3) UN insurance

(4) Long-term care insurance

Income tax for me is very slightly higher. But in most jobs you get paid overtime. So my monthly pay is higher than my pay was in Ireland.

The size of Germany definitely counts to the difference as does the public transport system. Deutsche Bahn gets a lot of **** here. Trans delayed/late etc. But the network is extensive. I'm less than an hour from Dortmund, Essen, Cologne and Bonn. And that's on the slow regional trains. So people can live further out. Space is used better here too. In Ireland we always built out of cities with very low rise developments. Here every street has buildings that are 6 stories tall and you have to get outside the city to find anything like suburban Dublin. If Dublin was built like German cities it'd probably take up 1/4 of the size. And would have far better transport networks because the smaller size would make it more efficient.

Plus people in Germany have more options to move to. I work in tech. In Ireland I'm tied to Dublin and maybe cork. So if prices are too high in one place here, people can easilly move elsewhere.

That's not to say that there's no difficulties here. Berlin has received a lot of attention recently. But it's still nowhere near as bad as Ireland as a whole. Munich is supposed to be bad as well but at least people can move further away. It's harder to do that in ireland.

I think in Ireland we've gotten so used to higher rents over the last 20 years that the idea that someone could rent a good 30m2 apartment for under 500 a month is just an alien concept to us. It would be laughed at. And that's unfortunate because it's something we should be aiming for.

I was pissed off with my job in Ireland. I switched my linkedin profile to "available for opportunities" and there was an option as to where I wanted to work. One of the options was "European union" so I ticked it and about 48 hours later had a message from a German recruiter.

So I didn't even go looking. I'd agree with ancapailldorcha that linkedin is probably the best. Everything is on there now.

"There are plenty of jobs out there if you are looking but tax is just too high in Ireland, especially for what you get."

You just described getting quite a bit; the ability to quit working yet continue to receive money without working, and free health care. That's a pretty good return on your taxes. Despite the taxes, it seems you earned enough to put away for emergencies at least, another good thing that the banks are secured.

I think you've got a very sweet gig planned, thanks to Ireland.

Well if you knew the hoops we had to jump throguh th get the dole as working people who just want a break you would laugh.

Also we saved hard for 30 years and had to jump through even more hoops to hide money so that we could get the dole. This after paying so much tax over the years. We both had good jobs all that time and its the jobs that looked after us not the tax system. The tax system took a lot of money from us for very little very little value from it for us. We worked in other countries for many years and thats where most of our savings and the money to buy a house in Ireland came from in the first place. Dubai was a great place to work if it wasnt so hot. We squirreled away some amount of savings there.

No. I will fund my lifestyle as well as that of many others who never worked a day in their lives. I paid enough tax over the years in Ireland to pay me the dole for the rest of my life as well as put a heap of kids through school. I intend to enjoy it. I am definitely a net contributor to revenue and I will get only a fraction of that back.

Over 50% tax on any overtime or extra work you do is just unfair to the people who get up in the morning tbh.