The isle of Ireland is located to the west of Great Britain. Its area equals over 80 000 square kilometers (which maintains the territory approximately equal to that of one of the Baltic states). Ireland gained its independence from Great Britain in 1922. English is the official and business language, though Irish (belonging to the Celtic group) is an official language as well.

The Irish Pound is the currency of the land (1 IRP = USD 1,2).
Population of the country is 3.5 million people.

     The republic of Ireland is politically and economically stable country, the government of which is appointed by democratic elections. The country fully meets the respectability criteria. It has a well-established contemporary legislation for businesses, which in many respects is similar to the British one. Ireland is a progressive financial centre with efficient bank, legal and auditing services available with perfect systems of international transport and communications.

     At the present moment, the country is going through the stage of constant upward movement. To a big extent, this is happening due to the development of the areas of high technologies, telecommunications and offshore software development industry. The standard of living is growing which means that more and more new jobs are being created, and to fill those without recruiting foreign professionals is becoming increasingly difficult due to the limited nature of the domestic human resources.

     Ireland has been achieving such a rate of development over many years. Yet 20 years ago it was in many ways similar to the countries of CIS, whose many citizens are prompted to leave their fatherland because of lack of future prospect. A lot of Irish chose to move to other countries of Western Europe, and many to America, where the immigrants formed an Irish community, which already now is superior to the population of Ireland.

     After launching reforms in economy, many people returned to the country (this process is still in progress) with a luggage of new ideas, knowledge and resources. This created a greater positive impact upon the national economy development. Though Irish economy is still dependent upon American one (who is the biggest customer) and on regulations imposed by EEC, a member of which it is.

     Over the recent years Ireland has been claiming the world community's attention not only on economical level but on political level as well (politics, as it were, is economy but on a greater scale). The country has been passing liberal legislations that draw financial and human resources into it. For instance, in January of 2001 Ireland came to be the first in the world to pass the law about electronic signature (technology of which was developed in Ireland as well). The document was signed electronically Prime Minister herself!

     Here we should emphasize a certain ethnic feature that can easily plunge horror in hearts of people over-regulated by bureaucracy. So, Irishmen don't care about signatures at all - one can write "Pp" on an official document and that will designate "for and on behalf of", and sign it himself or let any John, Dick or Harry do it. Whew!

     Thus Ireland became a prosperous, liberal and stable state, attractive not only for its citizens (accommodations prices are growing constantly) but for tourists as well (over the last years an obvious interest increase was noted). By the way, the biggest expense, as it is clear from the previous sentence, for the Irish family is the accommodation bill. In Ireland, a few widespread forms of "dwelling in habitation" exist.

     The most expensive scheme of living is to hire an apartment with all conveniences (a kitchen, a bathroom, a toilet, a living-room) and two or three bedrooms or a private house with the same conveniences. To get more information about accommodation rental process and other details of living in this country, read the page named Living and Working in Ireland presented by our Irish office.

     Another important life factor in Ireland, to which any law obedient citizen pays a great deal of attention, is the taxation system. In a few words we can say, that making an account for an average SW engineer (whose income rate is above average), for the married percentage levied by the state will be equal to 20-23%, for the single it should be around 24-28%. More detailed information can be obtained from Tax calculator, compiled by our Irish office.

     If you are an IT professional, it will be of interest to you to make yourself familiar with the next page - Ireland Is Waiting For Programmers.

     More information about the country is available at "LINKS", a page of other useful links, which are devoted (fully or partially) to the Emerald Island, the ancient home of Celts.