DUBLIN has long been a popular destination for foreign tourists, who enjoy its warm pubs, silky beer, Georgian street-scapes and leisurely approach to life. But lately it seems that longer-term visitors have been falling out of love with Ireland's lively capital. Last month a survey of 13,000 expatriates put Dublin fifth from bottom of a list of 51 global cities, ranked by quality of life. Their main gripe (as with Paris, which finished two places lower, sandwiched between Riyadh and Jeddah) was not a sudden collapse in the city's charm, safety or amenity but its high cost of living, and in particular the difficulty of finding somewhere to stay. According to a recent report by World-First, an international-payments firm, Luxembourg is now the only European country where renting a home is pricier than it is in Ireland. Daft.ie, an Irish property website, reported last month that the average monthly rent in central Dublin is now €1,819 ($2,155)-more than 60% of Ireland's average pre-tax private-sector income. City wide, rents rose by 12.3% in the year to September, and are now 23% higher than at the peak of the "Celtic Tiger" property bubble in 2008, which spectacularly burst. Since then Ireland's headline economic figures have steadily recovered, bringing rents and house prices with them.
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