Re question 13 on buying a car.
Why not take your current Irish car over with you. You can get it re-registered once you're over there. I've seen a lot of former UK cars re-registered before Brexit.
According to the motoring press, the 2nd hand car prices worldwide are absolutely crazy at the moment. There are two big causes.
(1) A worldwide shortage of computer chips for new cars. Everything in a modern car needs a computer chip to operate. Knock on of that is that dealers are finding it harder and harder to get the stock of new cars they want, so people are hanging onto their old car for another year or two also contributing to the shortage, as it trickles on all the way down. Here's a New York Times atricle on car computer chips (
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/busi ... cedes.html)
(2) A huge source of nearly new 2nd hand cars came as a result of car hire companies selling off their stock after a season or two. This hasn't happened since Covid. No tourists - No demand. The car companies simply haven't ordered new cars that there wasn't the tourists there to hire them out. In addition to this, with the chip shortage the manufacturers were less willing to give the car hire companies the steep discounts they usually got for bulk buying.
A couple of years ago I had nothing else to do and went shopping for a car (no intention of buying). This was pre COVID or the chip shortage.
Here's a link to a post i made at the time. Sorry for the type script errors, but you'll see what I mean about Spanish car dealers. And these are main dealers.
post189295.html?hilit=yaris#p189295