In one week’s time we leave for Ireland, knowing how lucky I am to be able to slip from one country to another. My father was born in Belfast. I have an Irish passport. Jane is London Irish, her parents from Kerry and Sligo so it’s a pretty easy move for us.
I am hoping to become resident there. It means I’ll be spending the most of the year in Kerry, but will be back in England regularly for book stuff and more. Our kids are here, for starters.
There are all sorts of reason to go there, but the first one is that I can. I am lucky. Kerry is a beautiful place. If you do any work at a screen, the temptation is to stay fixed to it, nailed to a chair. I’m hoping that that is harder when surrounded by such amazing scenery.
The second is that Ireland is doing so much better than the UK in many ways. This would have been a shock to my father’s family, Armagh Protestants who were always snobs about the Papist south.
Ireland seems to have an optimism about itself that’s infectious. And, most importantly, it gives a shit about the arts. I’ll be honest, that’s part of the attraction too. Ireland’s tax exemption for artists means I don’t pay tax on the first €50,000 of my income from books. It’s a shockingly simple idea – and one that’s incredibly cheap for the government too. After all, most artists earn laughably low amounts of money. At minimal costs, Ireland gets to nurture generations of creative people – which is something the UK used to be pretty good at. Last year Ireland began trialling a Basic Income for Artists, offering 2,000 people in the creative industries a basic income for three years to develop their practice. In a country with a population of five million, that’s a pretty bold move.
So anyway, next week I’ll be plugging in my computer into a desk in a house close to the Kerry coast. It’s a pretty remote place and the village we’re heading for is pretty dead in the winter, so it’ll be a challenge. Maybe in a year I’ll be back with my tail between my legs. I don’t know. But I’m excited. I’ll send pictures.