Where to live in Ireland
We track 4 cities in Ireland: Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick. Each averages 11°C over the year. We estimate a couple needs €3,658 to €4,127 a month to live centrally. Ireland sits in our high tax tier. For citizens from outside the UK and Ireland (Common Travel Area) and the EU, EEA and Switzerland, long-term residency is possible, with conditions.
12 questions, about 4 minutes, no account needed. Taking the quiz is free, and so is seeing your #1 city. Full results for both of you are a one-time US$12 (€12 in Europe).
- Tax tier
- High
- High personal income tax
- Languages
- English, Irish
- English everywhere
- Safety
- 60/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 70/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~130 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 4 cities we track
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally.
Taxes
Ireland sits in our high tax tier: high personal income tax. The tier applies to every city here, and couples who cap tax below it will not see these cities in their results.
Source: OurNextCity tax tiers, assigned by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation, with no fixed rate cut-offs. Coarse by design; not tax advice.
Residency and visas
Possible, with conditions, for people from outside the UK and Ireland (Common Travel Area) and the EU, EEA and Switzerland. Realistic long-term residency runs mainly through skilled employment permits that lead to Stamp 4 and eventual citizenship, with a start-up entrepreneur route and a renewable sufficient-means (Stamp 0) option for the self-funded, while the investor golden visa is closed.
Citizens of the UK and Ireland (Common Travel Area) and the EU, EEA and Switzerland have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Ireland:
- Income: about $4,850 a month (Ireland Stamp 0 'persons of independent means', EUR 50,000/yr (~EUR 4,167/mo) for a single applicant, plus an emergency lump sum; converted at EUR 1 = USD 1.164 (Jun 2026); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 82 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 116 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).
Moving here from
What our data says for a couple who both hold one of these passports: entry, residency, taxes, costs and the cities that rank first.