Moving to the Maldives from Ireland

Our residency index: 45/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in the Maldives is for Irish citizens, based on the routes the Maldives publishes. Long-term residency is essentially investment-only: a five-year renewable residence permit via government-approved real estate, a bank deposit, or business investment (the new Pearl Residence programme and the existing corporate-investor route), while non-investors depend on employer-sponsored work permits or marriage to a Maldivian.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Investment: about $250k (Maldives residence-by-investment entry tier (Pearl Residence / corporate-investor route), USD 250,000 in government-approved real estate or a 5-year USD 250,000 local-bank deposit; figures are natively USD-denominated; as of June 2026)

Check the official requirements before you apply: amounts, conditions and exchange rates change, and what a couple needs can differ from a single applicant's threshold.

For short visits, Irish passport holders can get a visa on arrival for a visit, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold Irish passports, using the preset answers of our best places to live list. Your own answers would change the order. We pick the cities, up to five, by how often English Wikipedia readers looked them up over the past year.

1. 1

   1. Male

   59% match

   Est. cost

   €3,027/mo

   Avg temp

   28°C

   Safety index

   75/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally in Male is €3,027 a month. For comparison, we estimate €4,127 a month in Dublin. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

The Maldives is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax); Ireland is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in Ireland after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Safest cities to live in Asia
• Best places to live in Asia
• Cheapest cities to live in Asia

• Moving to the Maldives from the US
• Moving to the Maldives from the UK
• Moving to the Maldives from Canada
• Moving to the Maldives from Australia
• Moving to the Maldives from New Zealand

Every country and origin we cover

Every figure here comes from the datasets behind our city and country pages:

• Short-stay entry: the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT license), which records the entry rule for short visits on each passport.
• Residency index, routes and thresholds: the OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice.
• City ranking: our match model, the one behind the quiz, run with a typical couple's preset answers and both partners holding Irish passports. It ranks up to five of the country's best-known cities: of the cities in our quiz (100,000 people or more, capitals and a few towns movers seek out, such as Faro), the five most read about on English Wikipedia over the past year. It folds suburbs into their main city and leaves out countries with a residency index under 40 and areas under a US State Department Level 4 advisory, as our best-cities lists do.
• Costs: our cost model, a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026).
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.