Two routes carry almost every family move to Ireland from outside the EU. They are not interchangeable.
The route most families take
The Critical Skills Employment Permit is the working-age route. The fee is EUR 1,000 for a permit of up to 24 months, 90 percent refunded if it is refused. The salary test is EUR 40,904 a year for a role on the Critical Skills Occupations List where the applicant holds a relevant degree, or EUR 68,911 for a role not on that list (Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, checked 2026-08). It follows a named job offer, so the offer comes first.
A Critical Skills holder can apply for immediate family reunification, and once your spouse is resident they can take any job and apply for a Dependant/Partner/Spouse Employment Permit, issued with no fee (same source, same date).
The second route is Stamp 0, for people of independent means. Immigration Service Delivery states you should have an individual income of EUR 50,000 a year plus access to a lump sum equal to, for example, the price of a residential dwelling in the State. Your finances must be certified by an Irish accountancy firm, you must hold private medical insurance covering private hospitals, you get no State benefits, and you may not work. Processing averages four months (ISD, checked 2026-08).
Your children: anyone from outside the EU staying past 90 days registers and gets an Irish Residence Permit at EUR 300 per person. Children aged 15 and younger need not register, and any child under 18 who must register pays no fee (ISD, checked 2026-08).
Schooling
State schools are free and most teach in English. That makes Ireland structurally different from Spain, Portugal, France or Germany for an English-speaking family, and deletes your largest cost line.
Publicly funded schools cannot charge fees or ask for contributions in exchange for admission, and must accept all applicants unless oversubscribed. Many ask for an optional voluntary contribution. Gaelscoileanna teach the same curriculum through Irish, so they are a choice, not a trap. Irish is a core subject elsewhere, but a child educated outside Ireland for three or more consecutive years without the chance to learn it can be exempted if they are 12 or over at enrolment or finished primary school abroad (Citizens Information, checked 2026-08).
Two things catch American parents out. First, in 2025 more than 88 percent of primary schools had a Catholic patronage and ethos, and children there are taught prayers and prepared for sacraments during the school day. You can opt out and the school must make alternative arrangements, but it decides what your child does instead. Only 5.5 percent of primary schools have a non-religious patron (same source, same date).
Second, there is no central application. Each school publishes an annual admission notice before opening applications, and if oversubscribed allocates places by its published policy. It cannot select on academic ability, nor rank by when your application arrived if you met the deadline (same source, same date). The year starts in September, so the notice appears the winter before.
Two Dublin schools publish their fees. St Andrew’s College Dublin charges EUR 9,560 for secondary day students in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th year for 2026/2027, EUR 12,240 for its Junior School and EUR 12,600 for its International Baccalaureate programme (fee letter dated 26 June 2026). Nord Anglia International School Dublin charges EUR 16,561 at its lowest year group and EUR 25,296 in Grade 11 and 12 for 2026-2027, plus a one-off enrolment fee of EUR 1,600. Exams, trips, buses and lunches are extra at both.
Healthcare for the family
Access turns on ordinary residence, not nationality. The HSE counts you as ordinarily resident if you have lived here a year or intend to, and anyone it accepts is entitled to public health services (Citizens Information, checked 2026-08).
Public in-patient and day-case fees were abolished on 17 April 2023, so a public patient pays no daily hospital charge. Every child under 8 who is ordinarily resident gets a free GP visit card whatever your income, and all in-patient hospital services are free for children under 16 in public hospitals. A means-tested medical card gives free GP care; without one you pay your GP privately, and an emergency department visit without a GP referral costs EUR 100 (Citizens Information, checked 2026-08).
Private cover is a Stamp 0 condition only, and ISD does not accept cash-back policies (checked 2026-08). We publish no family premium figure, because we could not source one from an insurer’s own published rate for a stated plan.
What the first year costs
Official fees, for a family where one parent works: EUR 1,000 for the Critical Skills permit and EUR 300 each for two Irish Residence Permits. That is EUR 1,600.
Housing sets the rest. The RTB standardised average rent for a new Dublin tenancy was EUR 2,232 a month across all property types in Q4 2025, EUR 2,154 for a two-bedroom house and EUR 2,475 for a three-bedroom house (RTB Rent Index Q4 2025, published May 2026). That three-bedroom figure is EUR 29,700 over twelve months, plus a deposit capped at one month’s rent (RTB, checked 2026-08). Existing Dublin tenancies averaged EUR 1,939 in the same quarter, so rent quoted by someone already housed is not what you will be offered.
Schooling is zero in a State-funded school, or EUR 9,560 to EUR 25,296 per child per year if you go fee-paying.
Movers: we publish no figure. No government or statistics office reports what an international move costs, so any average you see is marketing. The only useful number is a quote against your own inventory and address.
The ECB euro reference rate on 2026-08-26 was USD 1.1669 to EUR 1.
What surprises families
Health insurance has a nine-month clock. Lifetime community rating adds 2 percent to your premium for each year you are over 34 when you first take out Irish cover, capped at ten years. Moving from abroad, no loading applies if you insure within nine months of arriving and stay insured (Citizens Information, checked 2026-08). Miss that at 44 and you carry a 20 percent loading.
The rental market is regulated but tight. From 1 March 2026 rent on any private tenancy can rise once a year by 2 percent or CPI inflation, whichever is lower (RTB, checked 2026-08). That protects you after you sign and does nothing to help you sign. The RTB recorded 54,214 new tenancy registrations nationally in 2025, down from around 78,000 a year in 2018 to 2020, which it reads as falling turnover in the sector (RTB Rent Index Q4 2025, published May 2026).
Your dog needs a tapeworm treatment on a tight clock. A vet must give it between 1 and 5 days before you arrive and record it on the certificate, or the animal can be refused entry or quarantined at your expense (Citizens Information, checked 2026-08). The rest is standard: microchip, rabies vaccine, wait 21 days, then an EU health certificate stamped by an official government vet. No rabies blood test is required from the United States, which is on the EU exempt list at Annex II to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/636 (European Commission, checked 2026-08).
Tax residence arrives sooner than people plan for. It is 183 days in a tax year, or 280 days across the current and preceding year together (Revenue, checked 2026-08). Ireland and the United States have a 1997 double taxation convention with a later protocol (Revenue, checked 2026-08), but it allocates taxing rights and does not end your IRS filing obligation.
Who should not move here
Do not move to Ireland if you need housing settled before employment is settled. Dublin housing is the binding constraint on everything else here. Arriving without a signed lease means paying the new-tenancy rate in a market where new tenancy registrations have fallen every year since 2022.
Do not choose Stamp 0 if either parent expects to work. It permits no employment and no State benefits, and at EUR 50,000 per person per year plus a house-price lump sum, it suits only families whose income already exists.
And if English-medium schooling is your reason for choosing Ireland, settle the ethos question before the catchment question. More than 88 percent of primary schools are Catholic-patron. For some families that is a detail. For others it is the decision.