[nickd2001]

Thank you for taking time to reply :) I'm very sorry you had that experience especially homophobia. After asking the reasons, I wondered if you'd come back and say you were non-white , which seems to be not be fun to be particularly in some rural parts of Ireland. I know an Indian guy who was happy in Dublin last time I spoke to him... but have heard horror stories too. I have a number of lovely Irish friends. Some living here in England, some I met in USA. At the same time, if people from a minority group are having a hard time in Ireland, I think its fair to call that out and its not an insult to the Irish in general. Of course, Britain was very homophobic in the not so distant past too. Yeah Ireland does actually seem more car-centric than England, partly just comes of being less densely populated (which is one of the nice things). My impression is housing crisis even worse in Ireland then England. England at least has affordable regional cities especially in Midlands and North. One thing I really missed when going to Ireland on holiday, was the English Rights of Way legislation. We have clear public footpaths here, whereas in Ireland, access and relationships with landowners seems more sketchy. However, for us English, and our kids, our own country seems to be going completely mad, and Ireland is an obvious way to have an insurance policy a.k.a EU passport. Then again, looks like a lot of EU countries are going a bit mad right now. I'm not convinced that the EU people were sad to exit from, will be the same sort of EU in 20 yrs time.