Expat Community > Ireland

nickknock
Joined 2005
Posts: 66

The Real Ireland

16 years ago

Having read a lot of the post, I think there is a lot of idealizing of Ireland. This country has many problems that are serious and need to be addressed. First the infrastructure. Many of the road tourist find quaint on their visit here, in reality are dangerous highways. Often suburb cities have roads connecting them that are not even safe for two vehicles utilising them. Forget taking a nice bike ride on them, its far to dangerous. Most of these roads do not even have room to walk near. The Irish pay with their own citizens lives for their failure to develop their road system. This is not just true outside of Dublin, but with in it as well. Forget using your bike around town, there are few bike lanes, and the few they have are in the wealthy south. One is also not allowed to bring their bike on public transportation routes.
Most housing in and around Ireland, is cookie cutter estate homesthat are miles of some of the most bland poorly built architecture you can imagine. To make things worse, most of these huge estates have little to no infrastructure. I mean no, schools, parks, libraries, etc.. Many of the children from these areas, have nothing to do, and have histories of being very violent. Ones chance of being a victim of crime in Ireland, shockingly are much higher then in USA/Canada. I would not give a once of creditability to the crime statistics. Crime here is highly unreported! The Police (Referred to as Garda) here are not a respected force, neither do they deserve to be. They are not well trained, and not likely to turn up soon should you be a crime victim.

Some of the other issues one should be aware of. Libraries here are very poor. The main Dublin library is a small store in a run down mall. I am not exaggerating. Shopping here is not very good and prices are some of the most expensive in all of Europe, Ireland is often referred to as the Rip off Republic. The reason is that Ireland has very limited large retail competition. There are only three major grocers in competition, Lidl/Aldi, two small discount retailers are the only thing keeping prices from going completely insane. The present players make sure laws are kept keeping competition out. I my self drive north to were there is a bit better prices. Many Irish have begun doing this as well.
One more major issue is health care. Ireland has one of the worst health care systems in the developed world. Its not because staff are paid poorly, but because it is badly managed. A visit to a Doctor cost on average 60 Euros. God help you if you need a specialist, you can easily wait half a year or more. You almost have to get private insurance, and even then the system is horrible. Many of the facilities are extremely outdated. My son was born in National Maternity on Hollis St. The inside looks like it has not changed since 1930. I dont mean that in a nice way. I always hope I or my family do not get seriously ill and need to rely on HSE for care.

Anyway, some things are improving. I just believe enough is not said about the real Ireland, and the many issues.

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