Hi Donegal Dan,
Just saw your post today so maybe its a bit late but heres my story.. I'm Irish, was doing some flying at home and decided to move to Australia to live and work here and said I'd do my cpl here.
I have Australian residency so its pretty ok for me over here but if you just come over on a student visa or that its a lot more difficult. The cost of living and of flying is increasing here all the time and with the euro being so weak it makes flying at home as cheap. Assuming of course that its euro you have to spend!
I realise that there are cheaper aircraft out there but I'm basing these figures on 172 or a piper. Its around 190 to 220 dollars per hour solo for a c172 here plus landing fees which is normally around 15 dollars.. when your duel training its around 250 to 270 per hour plus landing fees.
If you need theory and pre flight instruction over here some schools will charge you 50 -60 dollars per hour on top of that.
The above prices are not including GST or VAT as if you enrole on the 150 hr CPL course its gst free, if not then stick 10% on top of everything plus its 200hr minimum
My advice is unless you are moving to oz for more than just flying then don't do it. Check out Atlantic air in Cork , its a great school, the prices are similar to here but with far newer aircraft than most schools use over here and they do good ground schools and can take you from 0 to atpl there, throw in some hour building in Florida and your away..
My own situation is I have my Oz PPL now, and all my commercial exams passed.. have to do about another 90 hours flying for my CPL after that I'm going to do my MECIR here and then I'll either do the OZ atpls or the JAR atpls but it will depend on where I'm living further down the line. If I do the JAR ones all I have to do is sit the CPL flight test again in Europe and they issue you a conversion to JAR CPL.
I'm not trying to scare you off, but you should way up all the pros and cons before you move.. factor in all your costs living expenses , flights, visas, medical's etc etc and then do the same for Ireland and see how you get on. If money isn't the issue then by all means come on over coz the weather is great, the beer is cheap, the natives are friendly and the flying is incredible.
Best of luck and let us know what you decide
DOC