The Greeks who have moved to Ireland

Konstantinos Kostopoulos moved to Ireland two and a half years ago, in the hope of building a better life for his wife and young son.

Kostopoulos and his wife, Danai, had jobs in Athens, but “the situation was very difficult”, he says. “We thought we might have better opportunities in Ireland.”

Kostopoulos initially hoped to transfer to the operation in Cork of the US multinational he worked for, but in the meantime he found a job with another multinational, this time in Dundalk.

In the wake of the financial crisis the fortunes of Greece and Ireland may not have seemed very different. Both countries were in the economically troubled Piigs group, alongside Portugal, Italy and Spain, and both needed the support of their European partners to prevent their banking systems from collapse.

But fast-forward five years or so and the two economies have diverged substantially. The Irish economic situation remains difficult but is slowly improving, with unemployment down to 10 per cent. One in four Greeks is still out of work – youth unemployment is a staggering 51 per cent – and the new Greek government’s bailout negotiations with the EU rumble on.

It’s no surprise, then, that many Greeks saw the opportunity to jump ship.

Lida Douka came to Dublin in 2012, at the age of 26. One of the lucky ones, the University of Athens graduate had found work with a US multinational in the Greek capital. When the economic and social situation deteriorated she asked to transfer to its Dublin office .

“The day-to-day part was very difficult – not just the part people think about, such as having no opportunities careerwise. People were going on the streets for different reasons, and it made it difficult to do the simple things, like go to work, because the roads were closed, or you needed a public service but everything was closed or on strike,” she says. “I thought it would be a big struggle if I stayed there. Slowly, slowly, all of my friends started leaving – friends I grew up with, my closest friends. It was a big change in my life.”

Abraham Loutridis, who began a PhD at Dublin Institute of Technology after doing his master’s degree in Greece, in 2010, was also struck by the numbers leaving; he estimates that between 60 and 70 per cent of his class at university in Thessaloníki left the country. “People in Greece have a kind of a depression, feelings of anger and disappointment. But I think that the majority of the people are fighting every day to survive.”

Living standards

It’s not just the ability to find a job, and to avoid political instability, that it is bringing Greeks to Ireland. It’s also the higher standard of living. In Athens, Douka says, a young professional typically earns only €5,000 or €6,000 a year.

Greece is a cheaper place to live – “it’s easy for a person to live with €6,000-€7,000” a year there – but one big problem has been that lots of employees have not been paid. “We have so many friends and relatives [who] lost their jobs, or were working without getting paid, or getting paid very low salaries,” the Kostopouloses say.

In Dundalk their salaries have doubled, but they say they find the cost of living not too much higher than in Athens. “Rent is a lot more expensive here, but the supermarkets are the same, and the bills are almost the same – sometimes even cheaper,” Danai says.

Dr Stella Maria Kyvelou was also struck by the salaries when she came to Ireland, with her husband, in December 2010. When she took a four-year training contract at Galway University Hospital she joined six or seven other Greek doctors there.

She says her pay in Ireland is more than 50 per cent higher than at home – “a huge difference”. Even after cutbacks it compared well with the situation in Greece, where doctors had to wait for a year to be paid overtime.

Like the Irish abroad, many Greeks regard living outside their home country as a temporary measure. But unless the economy at home improves substantially, most see no return on the cards any time soon.

“To go back to Greece, it is my family there, my home, my friends,” says Abraham Loutridis, who is finishing his full-time studies in June. Going home “is one of my objectives, but I don’t know if I can right now”.

Danai Kostopoulos says, “As long as the situation continues like that we cannot take the risk – our son has a good education here – but one day we would like to go back.”

She is hopeful that the success of the Syriza party earlier this year will help bring about much-needed change. “What I like about the result of the elections is that at least it’s young people in the government; it’s something new.” After years of only two political parties in power, “now we can try something different.”

“At least we have the hope; otherwise there was no hope,” adds her husband, who says the EU hasn’t fulfilled its original goals. “We joined the European Union to have a better life, but now it’s the opposite. It has gotten worse, there are more homeless, and salaries are going down.”

He wonders if a Greek exit from the euro would be such a bad thing. “Since being part of the EU does not improve the standards of living, we need a change.”

But as the new Greek government continues to work on a deal with the European Union, others fear a Grexit. Lida Douka worries that the government of Alexis Tsipras may be hindering rather than helping the economy; she also worries about the effect of leaving the euro zone.

“I wouldn’t like to see that. I was able to switch countries without needing a visa; it’s easy to go back and visit my family whenever, or they can come visit and I can visit other friends in Europe. And there are many other advantages to the situation,” she says.

For Stella Maria Kyvelou it’s time for concrete action. “We have a huge public sector that we don’t actually need. We need to find a way of absorbing all those people in something productive,” she says, pointing out that 700 people graduated in her year at medical school – and that she was at just one of seven such universities training doctors. “It’s a huge number that we don’t need. We train too many doctors. It’s insane.” (Greece has 6.2 doctors for every 1,000 people. Ireland had 2.7 in 2012.) “Everyone tries to avoid taking new measurements, but we have to do something other than moaning about it.”