Moving Home: What Irish Finance Professionals Need to Know About Returning from Australia

Ireland is sending more people to Australia than at any point since 2013. An estimated 13,500 people moved from Ireland to Australia in the year to April 2025 — up 27% on the year before, and nearly triple the number who left in 2023. Over the same period, roughly 6,800 people made the return journey from Australia to Ireland — a smaller number, but a growing one. 

If you’re one of the finance professionals weighing that return, whether after a two-year working holiday or a decade spent building a career in Sydney or Melbourne, here’s what the move actually looks like from a hiring perspective.

Planning Your Return

Most people underestimate how early to start. Begin your Irish job search two to three months before your return date, not after you land. Most returning candidates arrive having already engaged an interview process – it’s the easiest way to sort accommodation, a bank account, and everything else that depends on proof of income. Update your LinkedIn profile and start reaching out to relevant recruiters. 

It’s also worth knowing that relocation packages for returning Irish candidates are less common than they once were. If you’re already back in Ireland, or clearly on your way regardless, employers have less incentive to sweeten an offer to get you here, that leverage works best while you’re still overseas and genuinely weighing your options.

Salary Expectations

The honest comparison: gross salaries in Australia tend to run somewhat higher on average than in Ireland, but Dublin’s cost of living, rent in particular, closes that gap quickly. A one-bed apartment in Dublin now runs close to €2,100 a month, and Irish rent, dining and public transport costs all sit meaningfully above Australian equivalents. It isn’t a straightforward pay cut, but it is a different cost structure, and one worth budgeting for before you commit to a start date. 

Differences

Two practical differences catch most returners out. 

• Superannuation doesn’t transfer: Unlike a UK pension, Irish pension schemes cannot accept a transfer from Australian superannuation. If you worked in Australia on a temporary visa and never became a citizen or permanent resident, you can claim a Departing Australia Superannuation Payment (DASP) as a lump sum before you leave — but it’s taxed on the way out, and once you’re back and tax-resident in Ireland, any pension income forms part of your worldwide income for Irish tax purposes. It’s worth a conversation with a financial adviser before you finalise a departure date. 

• Working hours reset. Ireland’s working week runs up to a legal maximum of 48 hours; Australia’s standard week is 38. In practice, Irish banking and funds roles — particularly at analyst and associate level — tend to run longer than their Australian counterparts, though still short of what’s typical in New York or London. Ireland’s recent “right to disconnect” gives some protection outside of core hours, but the day-to-day pace is worth resetting expectations around before you start. 

Understanding Job Titles

Ireland’s financial services market is a fraction of the size of Australia’s, and that shows up most clearly in job titles. Smaller teams mean flatter structures and broader individual remits, so title conventions rarely map neatly onto what you held in Sydney or Melbourne. A Vice President role at a large Australian bank may carry a narrower scope than an Associate Director role in a similarly sized Dublin team; equally, a title that looks like a step down on paper can represent a lateral move, or a broader one, once you account for actual scope. 

This matters most at offer stage. Rather than benchmarking strictly against your previous title, focus the conversation on scope — team size, reporting line, budget or P&L ownership, and the breadth of stakeholders you’ll manage. A recruiter who understands both markets can translate this accurately; a mismatched title expectation is one of the more common sources of friction late in a process, and one of the easiest to avoid with the right context upfront.

A Note for Transactional Backgrounds

If you’re coming from corporate finance, investment banking or private equity, one thing is worth flagging honestly: local network matters more in these areas than in most other finance functions. Deal flow and hiring for boutique Irish PE and corporate development roles often runs through personal relationships built up over years in a small market, and arriving without that network can work against a strong CV, at least initially. 

It’s a different picture at the larger institutions with an established Irish or EMEA platform, such as International Banks and Asset Managers, where hiring tends to run through structured, global processes rather than local relationships. International, transactional experience there is generally seen as a straightforward positive, not a gap to close.

Chartered Accountants: A Well Trodden Path

If you qualified as a Chartered Accountant in Ireland and moved to Australia for a Big 4 secondment or rotation, you’re on one of the most established return paths in Irish professional services, and one that employers and recruiters are very familiar with. Chartered Accountants Ireland holds a mutual recognition agreement with Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ), so the qualification itself transfers; there’s typically some registration and CPD paperwork to sort, but not a requalification hurdle. 

The demand picture makes the timing good. Chartered Accountants Ireland has reported a 10% drop in new qualifiers over the past three years, and the CSO is forecasting around 6% growth in accounting roles — Ireland remains one of the best-paid markets in Europe for qualified accountants as a result. For financial services specifically, that shortage shows up directly: CAs coming back from practice regularly move into financial control, product control, regulatory reporting, internal audit and fund accounting at banks, insurers and asset managers, rather than back into practice. 

General Landscape

Dublin remains the centre of gravity for financial services hiring in Ireland — it’s where the multinational and banking headquarters sit, and for most finance functions it’s the fastest route back into the market. Demand is currently strongest in risk, transformation, compliance and regulatory roles, driven by DORA and AIFMD II, alongside funds and asset management, where headcount has grown 22% over the past five years. 

International experience is generally viewed as an asset, not a gap to explain. Irish employers are well used to hiring people back from Australia, the UK and further afield, and Dublin’s finance sector is small enough that most hiring managers have made a similar move themselves at some point. 

Where We Recruit

Elevate Partners recruits end-to-end across banking and financial services in Ireland across multiple asset classes, so wherever your background sits, it’s worth a conversation. 

• Front Office: Corporate Finance, M&A, Private Equity, Relationship Management, Corporate Banking.
• Middle Office: Risk Management, Compliance & Regulatory, Product Control, Treasury.
• Bank Office: Operations & settlements, Fund Administration, Finance & Controllership, Technology & Change.

If you’re planning a return and want a realistic read on timing, salary expectations, or where your experience fits in the current market, reach out to the Elevate Partners team. We work with candidates through the full journey home, not just the final interview.