Ireland in the News

I've been living in Ireland for over six years now, and been recently granted citizenship. So when Ireland makes it into the news, I tend to pay attention.

In the past couple of weeks, I've seen Ireland listed in the news a few times. So given that I have a blog again, I figured I'd summarise what I've seen lately.

First up, postal codes! It might surprise non-Irish residents that the Irish postal system is ... well, we'll call it quaint. Dublin itself is only split into 20-odd postal regions. Surprisingly, the lack of a more accurate postal code system seems to work pretty well - at least for someone like me that occasionally gets some snail mail. There's been a couple of instances where I've been amazed that a letter with a pretty incorrect address arrives at the intended target.

Next, the Irish property market is doing crazy things again. Since I've been resident for awhile, I'm naturally interested in what's going on when the housing prices affect both my prospects of purchasing property and my current cost of renting. Unfortunately, the current market pattern sure looks like a repeat of history, so it looks like it might be a bit painful in the coming years.

Next up, budget 2015 was just announced. I haven't had time to digest what's going on with it just yet. Then again I don't know that I ever really managed the time to go through previous budget announcements. Let's see how long that summary stays open as a tab in my browser!

Lastly, Ireland is this month introducing a water surcharge. Being a Canadian expat, it was surprising to me that water wasn't a utility that was charged by usage. Sure, fresh water is about as plentiful as it gets here. But it still needs to be processed, sanitised, and made suitable for drinking. But the introduction of the charges is being viewed extremely negative by a large number of the population.