The Irish capital has the same appeal 20 years on.
Is settling into life in Ireland’s capital, and delighting in its nuances.
About 20 years ago, I lived in Dublin for a while. Now I’m back in this city of great texture, hoping both of us have improved with age. This time, I have a family. Too old for the working holiday visa, I’ve been allowed to live here with my partner, on secondment from his job in New Zealand. We’re quite unique, with our four New Zealand passports and two Kiwi children at an Irish school.
In Dublin, the Irish are energetic, busy and speak quickly. It seems like we move and speak in slow motion. A word for rural folk in Ireland is ‘‘culchie’’ and as people of Wairarapa, we feel closer to them, in ground speed and banter.
I’m certain the Irish are better at recognising the New Zealand twang. Twenty years ago, there was a blanket assumption we were Australian. Now, the Irish hesitate and many ask if we’re Kiwis. Thank you, Joe Schmidt, Jacinda Ardern and Graham Norton’s Big Red Chair. New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street airs on Irish TV each weeknight, as it did 20 years ago.
Arriving in the cold of January, we made the girls walk to school and they soon honed it to a brisk 10-minute trot. Their main threat is highspeed cyclists. As the weather warmed, their walk became a 15-minute stroll. After running two vehicles in New Zealand, we chose to go car-free in Dublin and public transport has worked for us. However, it soon became clear we were considered odd for not driving, especially in winter. At our school, parents arrive in sleek machines, their children leaping out warm and dry. We arrive windblown and damp. Someone asked if I was the girls’ childminder. I really should wear more makeup and protect my hair from the elements.
One day, a dead fox lay close to the school gates. Its titian coat was stained dark, its brush tail beautiful. We stood gazing at the animal, sorry for its end, but fascinated to see it up close. The girls see foxes creeping around their school – dark orange shadows.
Rent is high in Dublin, due to a housing shortage. We landed in a high-pressure rent zone on the Southside. On the second floor, we overlook a former Magdalene Laundry, where ‘‘fallen’’ young women were sent to work. At the centre of the leafy grounds, owned by the Sisters of Charity, work has begun on a building project. The laundry’s protected brick smokestack will become part of a high-end residential development. That’s Dublin.
Opposite the nuns is a small rugby stadium, where New Zealand-accented blokes can be spotted in the blue of Leinster. Tucked in the middle is my partner’s favourite cafe, owned by a Moroccan man married to a Polish woman. Of the non-Irish I have met in Dublin, Polish people make up the greatest number. Brazilians, Chinese and Romanians make up large expat groups.
At the immigration centre this week, an officer granted us a second year of residence. She remembered us from the year before, when we bantered and laughed over the fingerprint machine. Only in Ireland. We had briefly shared the queue with a certain New Zealand rugby player, who was fast-tracked through like a god. He’s still here too.
The arrival of big tech companies, here for favourable corporate tax rates, has swelled Dublin’s population of young, tech-skilled expats. Google, Facebook, Amazon and others have changed the landscape of the docklands. The city centre seems brighter than I remember it 20 years ago and tram cars now glide through the old streets.
O’Connell Street’s wide avenue of history is pinpointed by the striking 120m metal Spire, where many tourists begin their visit, alongside evidence of the city’s aching homeless and drug problems. Dublin has its Northside and its Southside: ‘‘Like two different countries,’’ a Dublin woman told me. The River Liffey is the geographical divider.
Ayear on the quiet Southside has passed and we now drift to the Northside at weekends, nosing around the neighbourhoods. There’s the Gaelic Games stadium, Ikea and the botanical gardens with soaring Victorian glasshouses (tip: they are warm in winter). The Gravedigger’s pub is a dark, dingy place of wonderment, with its back pushed into the edge of atmospheric Glasnevin Cemetery.
The complex Irish language is everywhere, on road signs, on television, on government emails and branding. It’s beautiful to listen to. Irish is compulsory in schools and, although our girls are exempt, they’ve picked up words and terms. The Irish word for fox is ‘‘sionnach’’.
We have insight to Ireland’s stretched hospital system. One daughter sees a specialist and we’re used to wonderful staff apologising for slow computer systems, in run-down offices in old buildings.
The city is dogged by budget blow-outs and controversies around promised new hospital builds. Still, we’re grateful for quick admission to the public system, when my daughter’s need was