Monday, 2nd June 2014

A bit of history

     To well understand a country you have to known its history. 

The Famine Statue

For a long time Ireland claim its independence and was in conflict with United Kingdom. 

Ireland is an english spoken country because of the several invasion of the Great Britain, but Irish as English are the two official languages and is still speak by a little part of the population "36%", and it is why you can see a lot of translation in the both languages every where. 

    The war for independence during the 19th and the 20th centuries have marked the country. Furthermore a big famine touched Ireland and destroyed two-third of the population. 

Ireland was for a long time a poor country with a lot of fight between the North and the South but in the nineties Ireland enters in the celtic tiger period which marks great economic growth. 

    Thanks to its geographic position Ireland is the European air and sea gate to North America, for exemple the titanic started from Belfast. Ireland is also really attractive for companies because of the low taxe on it, the lowest in Europe. It is why Ireland is the European Headquarter of many big American companies such as Google. 

Key values

    The religion is very important in Ireland "about 87% of the population are Roman Catholic" and in the irish culture. Religion has deeply impacted the irish people, their social norms and cultural values make a society more traditional and conservative. For example, divorce only became legal in 1997 and a strict abortion law was in place until 2013.

    Family take a big place in the Irish culture because of the Catholic legacy. But still today a lot of business are family own and run. 

Working in Ireland

     My work experience is not the best to see how Irish work because it is owned by two french but I made some research and several observation. 

To start Irish people could work at any time or any day. Not like in France almost all the shops are open the sunday and many of it are even open the night. 

The irish manager is not the same than in France, you can see him more like a coach, creating an encouragement atmosphere at work. 

Irish are generally friendly and quickly move to first name. Without the "vouvoiement" the atmosphere seem to be more relaxed between colleagues or even with the costumers. 

Social lifetimes

     Ireland is of course a really nice country to chill out after work. The best way is to go into one of the many Pubs and share a Guinness. Irish people loved to share music and bier, everywhere you go you will find a band with folk guitar singing with an irish identity. I find the musical culture so much better than in France and I enjoyed every outing. Furthermore Dublin is such a cosmopolitan city that you can meet people from everywhere.