So many questions before moving to Ireland

Hello !

My name is Florent, I am from France, and with my family we would like to spend 7 months in Ireland, from end August 2024 to End of March 2025.

Our objectives are to discover Irish culture and learn english.

We already started to look at housing, jobs, health, school topics... and we found it not so easy to find solutions despite Ireland is also in EEC.

We have an additional constraint, as we have 2 cats... and for our children we cannot envisage leaving without them.

We would be very grateful if you have some information about the different topics such as:

- how to work in Ireland and keep à good health insurance (we learnt that french CPAM doesn't apply anymore once you work and irish public health insurance only works from 1 year)

- as it seems not easy to work we are rather looking for volunteer work and cheap housing, thus rather in countryside in West Ireland , but not easy to find rental accepting cats

- once we have a house, is there a risk that schools do not accept our children and that we have to go somewhere else ?

... quite a lot of questions and we would not like to come in Ireland without answers to all these topics.

Many thanks in advance for your help !

Kind regards,

Florent