From London to Dublin: ‘Living here, I would say I am Irish more than English, even with the accent’

Sophie McDermott moved to Ireland, where her father is from, during Covid and plans to stay long termSophie McDermott in Dalkey. Photograph: Alan Betson The thing that most surprised 29-year-old Sophie McDermott about moving to Ireland from England was how often people would ask her where she went to school. “When I moved over it was a question that people would ask in the pub,” McDermott says. “I still think it’s very amusing.”Even at university in the UK, McDermott says it would be very unusual for people to ask where she went to school. Because Ireland is so small, “the chances are the person who is asking the question knows someone that went to that school or someone you might be connected to. And that’s a really lovely way to form these connections.” After university, McDermott took a job working on flood defences for the river Thames in London. Two months into her job the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and her flatmate announced she was going home. McDermott was unable to afford the rent on her own, and couldn’t go back home to her parents because they had moved to Singapore. So she boarded a flight to Dublin to go and stay with her grandfather. Her father is Irish and she has fond memories of spending summers in his family home as a child. READ MORE“I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Ireland was just reopening up, so I went to work in Brown Thomas for a bit.”McDermott had never felt really settled anywhere she lived in the UK. She grew up in a village just outside Bath and describes her childhood as idyllic. But after her parents moved away there was not much to anchor her there. She moved to Newcastle for university and loved her time there. But most of her community moved away after graduating and just a few months into living in London she had not yet found her feet. “It hit almost straight away when I moved to Dublin, that feeling of: oh something feels right here’.”[ A long road to Ireland: ‘The Irish are very secretive. They don’t tell you stuff’Opens in new window ]Although she had her beloved grandfather for company, she found it difficult to make friends in the beginning. “During Covid you couldn’t go out and see or spend time with people. I felt like people had their school and university friends and it was really hard to break into groups without the opportunity to spend a lot of time with people during that period.”Sophie McDermott with her dogs Winnie and Penny lives in Dalkey. Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times McDermott made one friend through work, who lived within a five-kilometre radius, meaning the two could do social-distanced walks.“I think if it had not been for that, maybe I could have been convinced to go back to the UK.”Despite challenges to find her community, she had an overriding feeling that Ireland was where she was supposed to be. She applied to do a master’s in law at UCD. Around the same time a woman she met through working in Brown Thomas had opened a spin studio. She invited McDermott to work part time as an instructor. Through her master’s and working in the studio, McDermott met who she calls her “core group of girlfriends”. She describes these women as her best friends for life.“A lot of them are international or not from Dublin, and I think that really helped as well because we did not have that shared history of schools and universities and whatnot. It meant that we were really all looking for friendship.” She estimates that more than half of her friends have moved to Ireland from abroad.She identifies as Irish and does not get much flak for having an English accent. Her dad always made sure she had an Irish passport.“Living here, definitely I would say I am Irish more than I am English, even with the accent. I think people might make assumptions but it’s water off a duck’s back. I don’t mind. I know exactly who I am and I do feel that sense of pride about this country.”[ ‘There are lots of similarities between Irish and English people. It makes it easy to settle in’Opens in new window ]She laughs as she says it is the Americans in her friendship group who come in for the most teasing. McDermott really enjoys the community feeling in Ireland. She loves how Dublin retains a special small-town feeling despite being the capital. “[When] something happens in this country, everyone’s thinking about it or talking about and, for better or worse, I do think that’s quite lovely.”During her master’s, she secured a training contract with one of the big corporate law firms in Dublin. She documented much of her experience on her TikTok account, which she jokingly called That Very Bad Law Student.“I was at an event at UCD last week and two girls came up and said, ‘The reason we are doing the master’s is because you did the master’s here and you said it was a good experience’. I get people saying, ‘This tip helped me pass the exam’, and I really love that.”Just as she was beginning to work as a solicitor, she met her boyfriend through a dating app. Her boyfriend was born in Zimbabwe and lived in Los Angeles before moving to Dublin in his 20s. They live together in south Dublin with their two dogs. The pair have decided that Ireland is where they want to live long-term. IN THIS SECTION