Australia Day: Trading Ballincollig for Sydney and Queensland for Blarney

TODAY is Australia Day. And despite the country being on the other side of the world, it’s a place Irish people have a huge connection with. According to the 2021 Australian census, more than 2.4 million residents identify as being either partially or fully Irish.

That’s 9.5% of the population. Last year, 21,029 Irish people applied for a working-holiday visa for Australia, double the number who applied in 2022. This sharp increase sparked a familiar debate - is the cost of living forcing our young people to leave Ireland, or stopping the Irish in Australia from coming home?

Therese Campbell, 36 - who is originally from Ballincollig - moved to Australia 14 years ago.

She met her now husband there and the couple have two children. 

“He is from Down and works in construction, I am trained as a property manager, but I’m currently working part-time as an officer administrator, so I can keep the cost of childcare down and spend more time with my two and four-year-old.”

The family live in the Sydney suburb of Botany, which is a twenty-minute drive from downtown. They are 15 minutes from a beach and can survive on one car, thanks to the city’s good infrastructure.

Childcare costs €90 per day, but the government provides subsidies depending on what you earn. It also offers a 50% discount for a second child. “I think it’s an incentive to get parents back to work,” explains Therese. “But the more you earn, the less subsidies you get, so it’s all about finding that balance. I would like to work full-time, but it’s not cost-effective because of childcare.”

Like Ireland, the cost of rent in Australia is continuously increasing and pricing people out of certain areas. “We are currently paying around €490 a week for an 80sqm two-bedroom apartment with a study. It would cost us about €850,000 to buy, so we can’t afford it. We’re considering moving to Brisbane this year, so we stand a chance of affording our own home.”

The rising cost of food is also a constant concern for the family of four. “We spend about €300 to €400 a week on groceries, including a trip to the butcher for fresh meat. Eating out is also very expensive. A coffee is about €3 or €4 and a sandwich is about €15. If we wanted to go out for a date to a reasonably nice restaurant, you are talking a couple of hundred euro.”

Choosing Australia

So why has the Cork native chosen to stay in Australia, given that she and her husband are facing a very similar situation to many Irish couples at home. “The job prospects are better here. It can be hard to get established, but once you work hard and give it a bit of time, there is a lot of potential for career growth and to earn good money. The lifestyle for the kids is also better than home. You know the weather is always going to be nice and we go to the beach and the park all the time. There are so many outdoor activities and it’s very true what people say about the Australian mentality - they work to live and don’t live to work.”

Having said that, Therese still misses Irish people. “When I get home to Ballincollig, I’m always reminded about how chatty people are. I love going to the local shop and bumping into people I know. We have been living in our building in Sydney for three years now and have neighbours who will barely say ‘good morning’ to us. Of course I also miss family and worry about my parents getting older.”

According to the Australian Embassy in Ireland there are 17,925 Australian citizens in Ireland. More than 3,400 of these identified their country of citizenship solely as Australia, while the remaining 14,444 hold dual Irish and Australian citizenship. Cork alone has two AFL teams, the Leeside Lions and the Cork Vikings.

The city also welcomes business owners who use what they have learned down under, to give them a unique selling point here, such as the Brock Badger & Dodo coffee shops on Barrack Street, and the South Mall. It’s run by the Australian “Badger” Brock Lewin, with the backing of his Irish father-in-law “The Dodo”. The Woolshed Baa and Grill on Sheares Street, also offers a potential place to hang out for any Australians feeling homesick.

Moving to Cork

But that’s not something Kylie Roche experiences very often. The 38-year-old Australian lives near Blarney with her Irish husband and five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son. “We met in Australia and I always knew he wanted to move home. So I agreed, and we came to Ireland in 2019. The first year was tough, because covid hit. I promised my husband I would give Ireland two years and it definitely took that long to settle in, but now I’m really happy.”

Kylie works as a dosimetrist, which is a radiation planner for cancer patients. She says that just like Australia, childcare costs in Ireland are a balancing act. “When I had to go back to work, I could only get three days of childcare, so my mother-in-law would drive all the way from Meath once a week to help us out. We’re currently paying €280 a month for 23 hours for our son. In Australia we think the same would be about €1,000 as there is no ECCE scheme there.”

The couple pay €2,300 a month in rent for a four-bedroom detached house with a large garden. “This is a lot cheaper than what we’d have to pay in Australia living close to an equivalent big city such as Cork.”

Kylie also finds the cost of food in Ireland a lot less expensive than home. “I’ve only been able to get back once since I moved here, but even then I was shocked by the price of groceries in Australia.”

One thing that is more expensive in Ireland is fuel. “We need two cars because the infrastructure isn’t very good in rural Ireland. It was never this expensive to fill my car in Queensland where I worked.”

But overall Kylie says she feels her lifestyle here is better than one she’d have in Australia. “Obviously I do miss the nice weather at times and January and February in Ireland can be tough. But Christmas and Halloween are magical and we’ve been able to travel to so many more places in Europe than we would be if we lived in Australia, which is great for the kids. I do have huge knowledge gaps when it comes to Ireland. I had to ask a friend recently where Munster was and pronouncing some of the patient names at work can be tricky, especially when they are ‘Sadhbh’ and ‘Eoghan’. It always gives my colleagues a giggle. Irish people are so friendly and I get asked a lot if I’ve visited Summer Bay from the TV show Home and Away.”

Speaking of the bond between the two countries the Australian Ambassador to Ireland Gary Gray told The Echo: “With so much of Ireland in our history, its influence shows up in our politics, law, religion and story-telling across every part of our brown and pleasant land. The Irish support not only our public services, construction and mining industries but contribute enormously to our culture, entertainment and hospitality sectors. They enrich us as, we hope, we enrich them. Of course some will stay and call down under home, but most maintain half an eye and half a mind on when they will turn the globe upside down again and head back to the Emerald Isle. When they do so, we bid them farewell and thank them for being part of our two countries ever-growing relationship.”