Moving to Dublin from the UK: Everything That's Different Now

Here's the good news: you can still pack up, hop on the Ryanair flight from Stansted or Manchester, and start working in Dublin the moment you land — no visa required, no immigration queue, no paperwork to file before you go. The Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland has been running since 1923 and Brexit didn't touch it, which means British and Irish citizens have the same right to live, work, and access services in each other's countries as they always did.

That's the part the internet tells you. What it doesn't tell you is that post-Brexit life as a UK national in Dublin has a few quiet catches that will absolutely catch you off guard if you show up assuming everything works exactly as it did in London, or Manchester, or Edinburgh. Banking is different, your credit history doesn't cross the water with you, your references need to be presented in a way that Irish landlords understand, and hunting for a flat in Dublin from a bedroom in Hackney is a specific kind of stressful that deserves its own guide.

So here's that guide.

The Common Travel Area: What It Actually Means for You

The Common Travel Area (CTA) is the arrangement that lets UK and Irish citizens move freely between the two countries, and it means you arrive in Dublin with full rights to live and work here without any kind of visa or permit. You're not an EU citizen, but in Ireland you're treated as something close to it for immigration purposes. You can take any job, sign any lease, access the public health system, and vote in local elections (and Dáil elections, once you register).

What the CTA doesn't do is sort out your practical admin. You'll still need a PPS number before you can be paid legally or access most public services, you'll still need to open an Irish bank account if you want to be taken seriously by letting agents, and you'll still be starting from zero in terms of Irish credit history. The right to be here is guaranteed, but the infrastructure of daily life still needs to be built from scratch.

Getting Your PPS Number: Faster Than You Think

The PPS number (Personal Public Service number) is the Irish equivalent of your National Insurance number, and you need it for pretty much everything: receiving wages, paying tax, accessing healthcare, claiming any kind of benefit or entitlement. The good news for UK arrivals is that the process is fairly straightforward and significantly faster than it used to be.

You apply at your local Intreo Centre (the Department of Social Protection's offices, with a main one in Kings Inn Street in Dublin 1 and branches across the city) and you'll need to bring your UK passport, proof of why you need a PPS number (a job offer letter or employment contract is ideal), and proof of your Dublin address. That last requirement is the slightly annoying one, because if you haven't moved in yet you might only have a hotel address or a short-term Airbnb. In practice, a letter from your employer confirming your address, or a bank statement with an address, tends to work. Ring ahead and explain your situation. The staff at Intreo are generally pragmatic about this.

Processing takes one to two weeks and your number arrives by post. It's worth applying in your first week in Dublin before everything else kicks off, because some employers won't process your first payroll until it's registered.

Irish Banking: Opening an Account as a UK Arrival

This is the bit that surprises most UK newcomers. Your UK bank account doesn't stop working when you move (Monzo, Starling, and Halifax will all still function perfectly), but Irish landlords and employers strongly prefer payments from Irish accounts, and you'll hit friction without one eventually.

The traditional Irish banks (AIB, Bank of Ireland, and Permanent TSB) have improved their onboarding for international arrivals but can still be slow. They require proof of address, which creates the same circular problem it always has: you need an account to prove you have a Dublin address, but you need a Dublin address to get an account. If you go the traditional bank route, bring your passport, your employment contract, and ideally a utility bill or lease agreement. Some branches are more flexible than others, and the AIB branch on Grafton Street has staff who deal with new arrivals regularly.

The smarter move for most people arriving from the UK is to get a Revolut or N26 account running before you land. Both open fully online with just your passport and a selfie, both issue EUR IBANs, and both are accepted by letting agents and employers as legitimate bank accounts for the purposes of showing income. Set one of these up the week before you move, get your first payslips paid in, and you have a genuine bank history ready for your rental application within about a month of arriving.

Your UK credit score doesn't transfer to Ireland, and lenders and landlords here can't see your Experian or Equifax UK rating, so you're starting with a blank slate. This matters more for things like phone contracts and hire purchases than for renting (landlords in Ireland don't typically run credit checks the way UK letting agents do), but it's worth knowing.

Renting Without Irish References: The Real Challenge

If you've rented in the UK for years and have a pristine reference from your London landlord, that reference is going to land with a soft thud on a Dublin letting agent's desk and not do very much. Not because it's worthless, but because Irish landlords are working with a domestic reference system and a foreign name, phone number, and address doesn't give them easy verification options.

Here's what actually works. Your employer reference letter is the single most important document in your Dublin rental application, and it needs to be thorough. A good one covers your name, job title, start date, annual salary, monthly take-home, contract type (permanent or fixed-term), and includes a named HR contact with a phone number that can be called during Dublin business hours. If your UK employer has an Irish office or an Irish entity, even better, because landlords feel more comfortable ringing a Dublin number.

The income threshold most Dublin agents apply is that your monthly gross pay should be roughly three times the monthly rent. A two-bedroom flat in Stoneybatter or Phibsborough is running somewhere around €2,000 to €2,400 a month in 2026, so you'd generally want to be earning at least €65,000 a year to be in comfortable territory for that bracket. If you're coming with a solid UK tech or financial services salary, you'll usually be grand. If you're taking a pay cut to make the move (which some people do, for lifestyle reasons), factor that in before you commit to a particular area.

UK landlord references are worth including even if they're harder to verify. Some Dublin landlords will make the call, and a reference that confirms you paid on time for three years in Brixton or Bristol is better than nothing. Type up a brief cover note explaining who the referee is, their relationship to you, and how to contact them, so the agent doesn't have to puzzle it out.

One practical tool that makes a real difference here is HomeScout's Renter Resume, a structured rental profile you build once that covers your employment, income, rental history, references, and a personal statement. For UK arrivals who don't have an Irish rental record, this lets you present your full situation in a coherent, professional format that answers the landlord's questions before they ask them. It's particularly useful when you're applying remotely before you land, because it replaces the "can we meet for a quick chat" call that some agents want to have.

Photo: Unsplash

No Letting Fees. Yes, Really.

One of the things that genuinely delights UK arrivals when they figure it out: there are no letting fees in Ireland. Zero. Zilch. The ban on tenant fees has been in place since 2019, and unlike the UK where you used to hand over hundreds of pounds in referencing and admin fees before you'd even met a landlord, in Ireland the entire cost of the letting process falls on the landlord. You pay your deposit (typically one month's rent), your first month's rent, and that's it.

The deposit rules are also slightly different. In Ireland, landlords can only take a maximum of one month's rent as a deposit, so they can't ask for two months the way UK landlords sometimes do. And when you leave, the RTB (Residential Tenancies Board) has a deposit protection process that makes it harder for landlords to invent deductions from thin air. You still need to document the state of the property when you move in (photos, written record, email to the landlord confirming condition), but the system is more tenant-friendly than the UK equivalent.

There's no tenancy deposit scheme in quite the same way as the UK's TDP system, but landlords are legally required to return deposits within a reasonable timeframe and the RTB will arbitrate if they don't.

London vs. Dublin: The Honest Cost Comparison

If you're coming from London, Dublin rents will look high, and if you're coming from most other UK cities, they'll look very high — but the overall picture is more nuanced than the headline numbers suggest.

A decent one-bedroom flat in a central Dublin neighbourhood (Rathmines, Ranelagh, Portobello, Smithfield) is running around €1,800 to €2,300 a month right now. The equivalent in central London (Zone 2, say) would be £2,000 to £2,500. So Dublin is cheaper than London, but not by the margin people sometimes expect, and not cheaper than Manchester, Edinburgh, or Bristol by any meaningful amount.

Where Dublin does come out ahead is in the lifestyle stuff. Pints in a non-tourist pub like Kehoe's on South Anne Street or The Gravediggers in Glasnevin are still under €7 in most places, compared to London's £7-plus in anything that isn't a Wetherspoons. Coffee and lunch in a decent spot in Ranelagh or Stoneybatter runs a bit cheaper than the equivalent in Shoreditch or Clapham, taxis via Free Now are generally less painful on the wallet, and if you live near a Luas or DART line, you can absolutely survive without a car in a way that's genuinely harder in most UK cities outside London.

Salaries in tech, finance, and pharma are strong in Dublin, often matching or exceeding London pay without the London cost of living penalty, which means the move often makes straightforward financial sense for people in those fields. If you're in hospitality, retail, or the arts, the numbers are tighter and worth working through properly before you commit.

Apartment Hunting from the UK: How to Do It Without Losing Your Mind

Trying to find a Dublin flat from a bedroom in the UK is a particular kind of chaos, because Dublin's rental market moves extremely fast. A good listing on Daft.ie at a reasonable price can have thirty enquiries within two hours, and agents are not going to hold properties for people who can't view until next month.

The strategy that actually works is to plan a Dublin trip specifically for viewings: three or four days, a cheap hotel or Airbnb, and your search compressed into a focussed window. Book viewings ahead of the trip, and have your documents ready to send the moment you express interest so you're not scrambling to email payslips from your phone on the DART to Blackrock.

For the monitoring side of things, HomeScout's Auto-Hunter is built exactly for people in your situation. You set up your search once (budget, area, size, any specific requirements like pet-friendly or parking), and it scans the market around the clock and alerts you the moment a matching property appears. For people still based in the UK, this means you can be looking at a new listing within minutes of it going live, rather than checking a site manually a couple of times a day and finding it's already gone.

The Cultural Stuff Nobody Warns You About

A few things that genuinely trip up UK arrivals that aren't really about paperwork:

Irish landlords, especially those managing smaller properties directly (rather than through an agency), tend to respond much better to a warm, personal enquiry than a copy-paste application form. A quick message explaining who you are, why you're moving to Dublin, what you do for work, and asking a genuine question about the property goes down much better than a generic "I am interested in viewing the above property." Sound like a person.

The Irish rental market doesn't have the same chain of sealed bids that London sometimes descends into, but competition is real and speed matters. Having your documents ready to send immediately (payslips, employment letter, ID, previous landlord reference) can be the difference between getting the call and not.

One more thing worth knowing: the RTB is a genuinely useful resource and it's free. If you ever have a dispute with your landlord over deposit, repairs, rent increases, or anything else, the RTB arbitration process is there and it works. Don't be afraid to use it.

Before You Sign Anything

Last thing, and this one matters. Irish leases are not standardised, and they routinely contain clauses that are either unenforceable under the Residential Tenancies Act or quietly tilted in the landlord's favour. Things like clauses requiring you to pay the landlord's legal costs if you have a dispute, clauses waiving your right to a Part 4 tenancy (the protection you get after six months), or clauses about replacing appliances at your own cost through normal wear and tear.

Run your lease through an AI contract review before you sign it. HomeScout's AI Contract Review reads your lease, flags anything that looks dodgy, and explains it in plain English so you know whether to push back or whether it's just standard language that sounds scary but is actually fine. In a city where you're new and you don't know anyone at a solicitor's office yet, catching one bad clause before you sign is worth a thousand "I should have read that more carefully" regrets later.

Dublin is a genuinely brilliant city to live in, and for UK arrivals the practical barriers are lower than almost anywhere else in Europe. The CTA does the heavy lifting on the legal side, and the rest is just prep work. Get it sorted, get your Renter Resume built, get your Revolut running before you land, and you'll be well placed. The sooner it's done, the sooner you can spend a Friday evening in The Long Hall on South Great George's Street wondering why you didn't make the move years ago.