“It’s not for the fainthearted,” says Lauren Fay of her decision to upsticks from her native Galway to the Polish port city of Gdańsk. Her newly adopted coastal home, where she moved with her Polish partner, is “beautiful”, “not too chaotic” with a “lovely old town” that has the “nice cosy feeling I love about Galway”. Some 100,000 Poles live in Ireland, from a high of more than 200,000 post-2004 EU accession. Many Poles have returned home, attracted by a booming economy, rising wages and lower costs of living. Returning to the tens of thousands of Polish emigrants who have returned in recent years, she says “I see the amount of Poles moving back here.

Source: The Irish Times February 16, 2026 06:09 UTC