Living in Ireland | Why a Country That Lost Millions Keeps Pulling Them Home | 4K

Every March, the river through downtown Chicago is dyed bright green for a holiday that began in a country more than 3,500 miles away. That country has more cattle than people. Here, people drink more tea than almost anyone on Earth. And its small towns paint their shopfronts red, blue and yellow, while on parts of the West Coast, rain falls on about two days in three. This is Ireland. Few small countries are recognized so widely, but what travels abroad are the symbols. Life in Ireland runs on something much harder to carry away. This country once lost millions of its people to the ships, and today one small island here is writing across the ocean, asking strangers to come and live there. This is not a journey that visits through all the symbols. It is a journey through the life people here wake up to every morning. So, what is life really like in Ireland, a country that the rest of the world thinks it's long known? It is a land kept green by rain, where the cows climb uphill for winter. Villages that run on the local pub and the local team, where the best athletes still play for free. And a nation that once watched millions sail away now welcomes tens of thousands home every year. Before we begin, we'd love to know what time is it where you are? And which country are you joining us from? Let us know in the comments below. Now join us as we step past the symbols into everyday life in Ireland. The first surprise is how small it is. Ireland spans about 27,000 square miles, which makes it only a little bigger than West Virginia. You could drive across it in an afternoon. About five and a half million people live here, and nearly three in every ten of them live in and around Dublin. Dublin is the capital, a city of bridges over the River Liffey, red brick streets, and glass offices along the old docks. Cork, the country's second-largest city, is home to about 224,000 people. Galway, out on the west coast, has around 86,000, and on a busy evening, its streets feel like one long conversation. Beyond the cities, the country breaks into small towns. Places like Dingle and Westport paint their shopfronts blue, red, and yellow and gather around a harbour or a market square. In towns this size, faces repeat. The same people pass on the same street, morning after morning, and a newcomer is noticed by lunchtime. Between the coast, the land flattens out. The River Shannon, the longest in Ireland, winds through the middle of the country past wide lakes and brown bogs. What sets the rhythm of all these places is the weather. Moist air rolls in from the Atlantic, almost without a break. In parts of the West, rain falls on about 225 days a year, while the East Coast sees closer to 150. Nobody here plans a day around perfect sunshine, because perfect sunshine might last an hour. A jacket goes everywhere, even in July. Only the Southeast gets a little more luck. Its far corner is the sunniest part of the country, with more than seven hours of sunshine a day in early summer. Inland from there sits Kilkenny, a small medieval city of about 27,000 people, where a castle has stood for more than 800 years. That uncertainty has shaped the way people talk. The weather opens almost every conversation, at the bus stop, in the shop, over the garden wall. People tend to be unhurried, quick with a joke, and patient enough to wait for the sky to clear. There is even a word for the best part of all that talk. The craic. It means fun, news, and good company all at once. And what's the craic? Is simply how many people say hello. Leave the towns, and the roads begin to shrink. Country lanes are often barely wide enough for one car, squeezed between stone walls or tall hedges. Sheep wander across them as if they own the place. When two cars meet, the drivers often trade a tiny greeting, one finger raised, nothing more. Motorways link the big cities, but in the countryside around them, about 73% of commuters drive to work against 45% in the cities. Out here the car is how daily life holds together. Even a passing car tells you something. Irish number plates carry a county code. D for Dublin, KY for Kerry and G for Galway. Ireland has 26 counties and each one has its own accent, its own sporting colours and its own fierce pride. Introductions follow the same map. People here are rarely just Irish. They come from a county, and inside that county, from a parish, a townland, a particular stretch of road. That is the first sign of what holds this country together. In a place this small, people do not only belong to a nation. They belong to a particular patch of ground, and to the people who live on it. The rain that falls on those parishes does something else too. It makes the green the whole world recognizes. But that green does not appear on its own. So how is it made? It starts with grass. All that rain falls on mild ground that rarely freezes for long. So the grass keeps growing nearly all year. More than nine-tenths of Ireland's farmland is grassland. And it feeds about 6.9 million cattle. That is more cattle than people. The richest grass grows in the Golden Vale. A broad green sweep across East Limerick, South Tipperary and North Cork. Dairy farming there is thicker than anywhere else in the country. Irish milk travels a long way. Kerrygold Butter, made from it, is now the second best-selling butter brand in the United States, with more than a billion dollars in sales in 2025. Rain becomes grass, grass becomes milk, and milk ends up on breakfast tables thousands of miles away. Most of that land is still worked by families. Ireland has about 135,000 farms, each covering some 82 acres on average, around 33 hectares. The people running them are close to 60 on average, and many farms have passed from parent to child for generations. Up on the shared hills, sheep graze side by side from many different flocks. Each farmer sprays a patch of colour on the wool, red on the shoulder, blue on the back, so everyone knows whose animal is whose. Not all of the land is green. About a fifth of Ireland is peat, soft brown bog built up over thousands of years. In spring, Some families still cut it by hand and stack the wet sods to dry in the wind. Through the winter, they burn it in the fireplace. Since 2022, turf can no longer be sold, in shops or online, and the State Peat Company stopped harvesting altogether in 2021. But a family can still cut what it needs for its own hearth. Out in County Clare, the rules of farming turn upside down. The Burren is a vast plateau of bare grey limestone and in winter farmers walk their cattle up onto it, not down into the valleys. The rock soaks up warmth through the summer and gives it back slowly when the weather turns. The animals get dry ground to lie on and fresh water from springs between the stones. The cattle do something for the hills in return. By grazing through the winter, they stop thick scrub from taking over, and that keeps space open for flowers. More than 70% of Ireland's native plant species grow in the Burren, with alpine flowers blooming beside orchids usually found around the Mediterranean. In 2019, this winter grazing joined Ireland's National List of Living Heritage. Local farmers are now paid for how well their land looks after its wildlife. Just offshore, the Aran Islands faced an even harder problem. The ground there is almost solid rock. Nearly every field had to be pieced together on top of it, and every stone cleared away had to go somewhere. By one estimate, the three islands hold around 1,000 miles of dry stone wall, roughly 1,600 kilometres, for a population more than 1,000 people. The West has its own horse for this kind of country. The Connemara pony is Ireland's best-known native breed. Sturdy, sure-footed, and around four to five feet tall at the shoulder. Local legend says its ancestors swam ashore from Spanish warships, wrecked in 1588. Nobody can prove it, but people here like the story too much to give it up. All this green is meant to be walked. Dozens of waymarked trails cross the mountains and the coast. Just south of Dublin, the Wicklow Mountains rise into a national park and the Wicklow Way, opened in 1980, was the country's first waymark trail. It runs about 81 miles, roughly 131 kilometres, through forest, valley and open bog. In the west, the Wild Atlantic Way follows the coast, and on the last Sunday of every July, thousands of pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in County Mayo. A few still make the climb barefoot. Rain, grass, cattle, bog and sea. In the end, all of it leads to the same place, the kitchen table. And strangely, the Irish table starts with something that does not grow here at all. Tea came here by ship, and it never left. The Irish drink around 2.2 kilograms of it per person every year, nearly five pounds. By most counts, only Turkey drinks more. That works out to two or three cups a day for every person in the country. Two brands fill most of the shelves, Barry's and Lyons, and families tend to pick a side and stay loyal for life. Ask which one is better, and you may start an argument that lasts all evening, but here, tea is more a signal than a drink. If someone fills the kettle when you walk through the door, it means you should stay a while. Turn down the cup, and you will likely be offered it again. Saying yes is how a visit begins, and how a stranger becomes a guest. Bread usually follows. Soda bread has been baked in Irish kitchens since the 1830s, when baking soda first arrived. Flour, buttermilk, a pinch of soda and a hot oven are all it takes. A fresh loaf can be on the table within the hour. On weekends, a full Irish breakfast fills the plate, a meal built for long days outdoors. On Sundays, many families still sit down to a roast dinner with grandparents at one end of the table and grandchildren at the other. The older generation does far more than visit. Nearly three in ten people over 70 help look after their grandchildren, an unpaid backbone of family life. The sea fills the rest of the menu. In Galway, an oyster festival has opened the season each September since 1954. Up in Donegal, the harbour of Killebegs brings in about two-thirds of all the fish landed in Ireland. Along the west coast, a red seaweed called carrageen is picked from the rocks and dried in the sun. It is then set with milk into a soft pudding that many grandmothers still make from memory. Even the country's most famous coffee began with the weather. One winter night in 1943, a flying boat bound for New York turned back after hours of fighting a storm. It came down again at Foynes on the Shannon Estuary. The chef, Joe Sheridan, wanted to warm up the cold, tired passengers. He poured Irish whiskey into hot coffee and floated cream on top. When someone asked if it was Brazilian coffee, he told them it was Irish coffee. That is how the story is still told in Foynes, and the drink has since travelled the world. Food here has never been about grand cooking. A cup of tea, a warm loaf, a chair pulled up to the table. None of it cost much, and all of it says the same thing. You are welcome here, and you can stay as long as you like. When the working day ends, the teapot stays in the kitchen. But when a whole village needs to get together, it does not meet in anyone's house. It meets at the pub. Around the world, the Irish pub is easy to find. By one industry estimate, there are more than 2,000 Irish-style pubs in over 100 countries, from Tokyo to Buenos Aires. They copy the dark wood, the brass taps and the old signs on the walls. What they cannot copy is the job a pub does back home. In a small Irish village, the pub often does jobs that have nothing to do with drink. The notice board by the door lists the next card game, a lost dog and a fundraiser for the local team. Word of who needs a lift to the hospital or a hand with the silage travels across the bar faster than by phone. On a wet winter evening, it may be the one place in the village where anyone can walk in without an invitation. Many regulars are not there for the drink at all. They come to find out how everyone else is doing. Later in the evening, the music often starts, usually without anyone announcing it. The players sit facing each other, rather than the room, because the music is first a conversation between them. Tunes come in sets of two or three, one sliding into the next, sometimes until well after midnight. This is a session. Most of these tunes are learned by ear, passed from one player to the next, rather than read from sheet music. A child might pick up a tune from a grandfather on Friday and play it for a stranger on Saturday. Keeping that tradition alive is a serious business. A national organization founded in 1951 now runs classes and competitions in towns across Ireland. Its biggest event, the national music festival known as the Fleadh, moves from town to town. In 2025, it filled the streets of Wexford in the southeast and organizers estimated around 800,000 visits over the week. Out on the islands, the pub can be even more than a meeting place. On Cape Clear, off the coast of West Cork, the island bar is run by the islanders' own cooperative. Its profits go back into the island itself, helping to keep services and jobs there. Every pint bought at that counter is a small vote for the island's future. But the village pub is under pressure. Between 2005 and 2025, more than 2,200 pubs closed across Ireland, about one in every four. Rural areas lost the most. Today, around 6,400 remain. When a village pub shuts its doors, people lose more than a place to drink. They lose the room where news travels, where strangers become neighbors, and where nobody has to sit alone on a winter night. The pubs abroad tell a story of their own. They did not get there by themselves. Millions of people carried them across the ocean. And for most of those people, leaving was never a choice they wanted to make. On Custom House Quay in Dublin, a line of thin bronze figures walks along the river toward the sea. Their clothes hang loose. One carries a child over his shoulder. Behind them, a dog follows. The sculptor Rowan Gillespie placed them here in 1997, so the city would never walk past this story without seeing it. The story itself takes only a few lines to tell. In the summer of 1845, a disease reached Ireland's potato fields. The crop that fed most of the rural poor turned black in the ground. Within ten years, one in every five people was gone, lost to hunger and disease, or carried away on the ships. In a classroom of 30 children, that is six empty desks. A few steps from the statues, a tall ship is moored on the River Liffey. The Jeannie Johnston is a rebuilt copy of an emigrant ship from those years. The original made 16 crossings of the Atlantic and carried more than 20,500 passengers, and not one of them died on board. On many other ships of the time, the odds were far worse. The West still holds what those years left behind. On Killala Island in County Mayo, an entire village emptied out. At Slieve More, the walls of some 80 to 100 cottages still run in a single row beneath the mountain, with nothing but sky where the roofs used to be. Today, the only regular visitors are sheep, and the valley below is as green as anywhere in the country. Across the west, roads built by starving men in return for food rations still climb the hills. Cars drive along them today, and most people never think about who laid the stones. For those who left, the last night at home had its own name. It was called the American Wake. Family and neighbors filled the cottage, and there was music, dancing, and food until dawn. Then, as the time to leave came close, the mood changed, and the mothers began to cry as if at a funeral. Most of the people in that room believed they would never see the traveler again. In many cases, they were right. Later, letters began arriving from across the ocean. They were read out loud in the kitchen for the whole family to hear, and many held a little money toward the next ticket. That is how whole families crossed, one fare at a time. Many of those journeys began on the south coast, at Cobh in County Cork. Today, the town climbs a steep hill above the harbour, its rows of houses painted like a box of crayons. Between 1848 and 1950, more than 2.5 million emigrants sailed past these painted houses and out to sea. Most of them never saw this harbour again. They did not leave with much, but they carried the songs they knew, the way they gathered in the evening, the saints' days they kept, and the family names they wore. In Boston, New York, and Chicago, those habits put down new roots. The pubs, the parades, and the music spread from there. Today, about 32 million Americans claim Irish roots. That is why so much of the world feels it already knows Ireland. It met the Irish who had to leave. Some of you watching may be part of that story. If your family has Irish roots, just type the word roots in the comments so we can find those common threads that still connect us. What the emigrants carried became symbols on every continent. But some things could not be packed into a trunk. They stayed here, and they are still here today. The first thing that stayed was a language, Irish. A Celtic tongue far older than English on this ground is taught in schools across the country. But speaking it in daily life is another matter. In the last census, only about 72,000 people said they speak it daily, beyond school lessons. About 20,000 of them live in the Gaeltacht. A scattered set of Irish-speaking districts across seven counties, mostly along the West Coast. On the Aran Islands, more than half the people still use Irish in their daily lives. There, it is simply what neighbours speak to each other across a stone wall. Every summer, teenagers from all over Ireland come to these districts to live with local families and practice the language. The language came with a habit of telling stories. For centuries, village storytellers kept local history alive by voice alone, reciting family lines, old battles and ghost stories by the fire on winter nights. That love of a well-told story never faded. It runs straight through to the writers. This small country has given the world. Yeats, Shaw and Beckett each won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The second thing that stayed was a game. In 1884, a group of men met in a hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary, and founded the Gaelic Athletic Association. Their aim was to protect Irish sports. Today, there is a club in almost every parish, and this is where those county colours come alive. Children learn to play for the same parish team their parents played for. The biggest matches fill Croke Park in Dublin, with room for 82,300 people. Women play too, in Gaelic football and in Camogie, their own version of hurling. And yet the players on the field are not paid. They are teachers, farmers, nurses and electricians who train in the evenings and play for the place they come from. The most famous of their games is hurling. Players carry a curved wooden stick called a hurley and strike a small leather ball through the air at tremendous speed. The game is more than 2,000 years old, and in 2018, UNESCO added it to its list of the world's living heritage. On a summer Sunday, a hurling final can stop a whole county in its tracks. The third thing that stayed is the meaning behind the holidays. Abroad, St. Patrick's Day is famous for its size. Chicago has dyed its river green since 1962. New York has held a parade since 1762, longer than the modern Irish state has existed. At home, the day has been a public holiday since 1903. But for decades, it was a mostly religious day. And until 1960, the law kept Irish pubs closed on St. Patrick's Day. Dublin's big festival only began in 1996. The giant party came home from abroad. Halloween made the same journey, in reverse. Its roots lie in Samhain, a festival that ran from sunset on October 31st into November 1st. It marked the end of the harvest and the start of the dark half of the year. Medieval writings tell of a great fire lit for Samhain on the hill of Ward in County Meath. Families carved lanterns, but not from pumpkins. They used turnips. When emigrants brought the custom to America, the pumpkin took the turnip's place. Back home, bonfires still light up many Irish towns on Halloween night. Language, games and festivals were carried abroad as symbols. They still hold people together. The world took Ireland's songs and stories. The closeness stayed home. So what is life really like here? Some of the answer lives in these parishes, these clubs and these kitchens. But all of it depends on one thing. People have to stay to keep it going. And today, keeping people here is the hardest thing Ireland does. Weekday morning, the trains into Dublin fill with young workers carrying laptops and coffee. Many of them work for foreign companies that have made Ireland their base in Europe, including some of the biggest names in technology and medicine. Across the country, foreign firms backed by the state's investment agency employ about 312,000 people. In 2025, medicines and medical products made up over half the value of all the goods Ireland exported, and young Irish people are among the most educated in Europe. Around two in every three adults, aged 25 to 34, hold a college degree, the highest share in the European Union. So, the jobs are here. The problem is what it costs to live near them. A newly rented home now averages about 1,800 euros a month, roughly 2,000 dollars. Many young workers simply cannot afford to rent alone. In 2025, over 60% of young adults were still living with their parents. The pressure also reaches the countryside. Ireland now welcomes about 6.4 million overseas visitors a year, more than its entire population. The Cliffs of Moher alone draw around a million and a half. In summer, people in North Clare complain of traffic jams on roads built for tractors. Growing the economy without losing what makes this place worth visiting is a balance. The country is still learning to strike. And so, once again, people leave. In the 12 months to April 2026, about 35,400 Irish citizens moved abroad, many to Australia, Canada and the United States. For a country with this history, the sight of young people at the departure gates still stings. But the departures board tells only half the story. More than 30,000 Irish citizens moved back during that same period. Some had been gone a few years, some for decades, and many brought children who have never lived here. Each December, the arrivals hall at Dublin Airport fills with handmade signs. Grandparents wait at the barrier for small faces they have mostly seen on screens. Irish people tend to find each other by place. A stranger at a party in Sydney or Boston is asked which county, then which parish, and often, within minutes, they find someone they both know. When they come home, the old GAA club finds them a jersey, or a whistle, or a spot on the sideline with the other parents. On farms, help still arrives in a crowd. When the silage has to be cut before the rain or a shed needs a new roof, neighbours turn up with tractors and tools. The Irish word for this is meitheal, and the deal behind it is simple. Today you help me, and next month I will help you. And when someone dies, the whole district knows within hours. The notice goes up on their own death notice website, visited around a quarter of a million times a day. People drive long distances to stand in line, shake a hand and say they are sorry. Nobody faces it alone. Some places have gone further and started asking for people. In June 2019, Arranmore, an island off the coast of Donegal with just 469 residents, sent open letters to the United States and Australia. The islanders invited anyone willing to come and live there. They had just opened what they called Ireland's first offshore digital hub, a shared office with fast internet looking out over the sea. One line promised that a commute on the island would only ever be five minutes. Long ago, letters crossed the ocean asking people to leave. This time, a letter crossed it asking them to come. Whether any single letter changes, much is hard to say. Fiber broadband finally reached the island's homes in 2025, and the invitation still stands. Across Ireland, the old direction of travel is no longer the only one. That is the clearest answer to the question this journey began with. People here live inside a web of small connections. A county, a parish, a club, a kitchen table. It holds them while they stay, and it pulls them home when they go. From far away, Ireland is a handful of famous symbols. Up close, it is something smaller and much harder to break. In most places, people are held together by roads, jobs and laws. Here, they are also held by who saves you a seat, who knows your county and who drives two hours to a funeral. The rain keeps the hills green, the parish keeps the people close and off the coast of Donegal, an island is still waiting for new neighbours. You can find an Irish pub in more than a hundred countries. But to find Ireland, you have to come close enough to be known. If this journey brought you a little closer to everyday Ireland, we'd love to hear which moments stayed with you. Was it the cows climbing the Burren, the pub that works like a living room, or the island that wrote across the ocean for new neighbours? Tell us in the comments below. And if you'd like to keep traveling with us, give the video a like and subscribe, so you won't miss the next place we explore. Until next time, thanks for watching, and safe travels, wherever you are.