‘Boston is one of the more historical cities in the US, so Dublin didn’t feel totally foreign’

When Molly Coyle-Shibley’s husband, Tom, was offered a job in Dublin in 2019, she had just found out she was pregnant with their first child.

Four years on, and the now-trio have just bought a house in the city’s suburbs, calling Ireland home.

“He had actually been offered an interview two weeks after I found out that I was pregnant, and my family are proudly Irish-American, so we were like sure, let’s go for the interview, we’ll see how it goes and we just fell in love with the city,” Coyle-Shibley says.

So, in summer 2019, they moved from just outside Boston to Dublin, renting a house in Booterstown. Their daughter was born in February 2020, just weeks before the Covid lockdowns began.

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“We’ve been here a little over four years now and we just love it. We weren’t sure in the beginning, we were like, we will see, we had four years to kind of check to see how it was going to go and we figured we would probably go back [to Boston], but there was not a chance when we hit the four years that we were going to be going back this year.”

Part of the draw for Tom Shibley’s job offer was the fact that the company offered to fly he and his wife over for an interview.

“We figured, well, even if the job didn’t work out, at least we could say we got a free holiday out of it! But we just loved it. The city didn’t feel too different from Boston. I think Boston is one of the more historical cities in the US, so Dublin didn’t feel totally foreign,” Coyle-Shibley says.

“We were here for about six months before our daughter was born, and then she was born a week or so before the first Covid lockdown, so that was hard because our settling kind of got delayed I guess.

Everybody that we met in those first couple of months was just so phenomenally sweet and really generous

“We knew some people and were starting to get settled before she was born, but then you know everything kind of got delayed for a year and a half while everybody was dealing with Covid,” she says.

However, once the country began opening up again, and they got more settled, “we just knew”.

“It felt more comfortable to us, and things have changed so much in the US during Covid that the US actually felt foreign to us in a way, it felt like we were basically trying to figure out where we were going to call home.”

There was one thing that solidified the family’s decision to stay in Ireland over moving back to the US: gun violence.

“To be perfectly honest, there were a couple of school shootings that happened in and around Covid while we were here, there were other more general mass shootings and there was actually a shooting at a 4th of July parade two years ago and there a toddler, and his two parents there died shielding him from the gunman at a parade,” Coyle-Shibley says.

“My husband and I just looked at each other like, ‘that could have been us’, you know, it was a safe neighbourhood, it was a good neighbourhood, it’s not like it was like, inner city. It just happens everywhere now.

“With us having a small child and looking at going to schools and stuff, it’s just something we could not get past, because when we grew up – we’re both millennials – in the 90s and in the 2000s, there were guns but like the school shootings, the first one really happened with Columbine,” Coyle-Shibley says.

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“But they became so frequent in the last couple of years that we were like, I just don’t think that we could, in good conscience, go back, which just felt so strange.

“Once we were talking about the gun violence and whether we would feel comfortable going back, it sort of changed our perspective a little bit. Instead of looking at Ireland as a temporary place, once we started to look at it more long term, we realised that people that we had met since we have been her have been so wonderful, and like, we already had a full life here,” she says.

Coyle-Shibley works as a communications and office manager at Blackrock College Rugby Club, alongside doing freelance marketing work, having left a marketing job at a tech company when she moved to Ireland.

“We miss our family and our friends back home of course, but in terms of work, and my daughter’s entire life is here, she’s from here. So we were like, oh right, this already is our home really, we just weren’t looking at it that way. So many of the friends that we have made here have become family,” she adds.

The family have made friends here, some of whom are American, and celebrated Thanksgiving with them just a few weeks ago.

One of the first questions you get asked in America is, ‘oh what do you do?’, and that’s the fourth, fifth or sixth question down the line typically when I am talking to somebody new here

The relocation agent who helped the Coyle-Shibley’s find a rental when they first moved, brought the couple and their baby home from the hospital to save them getting a taxi after Coyle-Shibley gave birth.

There are differences between Irish and American people, though, Coyle-Shibley says. She feels as though “Americans in general are more individualistic”.

“You hear a lot about pulling yourself up by your bootstrap and doing it on your own, and I feel like there’s a little bit more of a community like village mindset here, and that could be partly because of how housing is set up.

“In Dublin anyways, there’s sort of villages within the towns and America is just not set up like that, you have to drive everywhere so you don’t bump into people on the street in the same way, everybody is a little more siloed I think,” she says.

Irish people also have a better work-life balance for the most part, Coyle-Shibley feels, which she likes “a lot better”.

“One of the first questions you get asked in America is, ‘oh what do you do?’, and that’s the fourth, fifth or sixth question down the line typically when I am talking to somebody new here.”

Although she had some difficulty with trying to get a bank account, PPS number and work visa, once those things got organised, and they settled into their new house, their neighbours came and introduced themselves.

“They were so sweet and saw that I was pregnant and immediately offered to help. Everybody that we met in those first couple of months was just so phenomenally sweet and really generous with their time and it was really, really nice to feel welcomed.”

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish