Driving in Ireland tips – our roadtrip experience

It’s been a while but I thought it might be good to get round to writing up my tips on visiting Ireland by car.  We did a road trip in the summer, and I made notes to do a post. There’s some quirky things we found. It’s just taken a while to get round to it. Hopefully it’ll be of some use to anyone going over on their own roadtrip.

For us in the UK, there’s not a lot of difference driving in Ireland. But preparing for the roadtrip threw up some conflicting information. The best tips (and funniest comments) were in response to my question on Threads from Irish people. Evidently a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror is essential, and some of the other suggestions were just as funny.

Our Ireland roadtrip

We only had 5 days in Ireland, travelling over by ferry from Holyhead. But that was enough to spend a little time in Dublin, then having several stops going south then across to the west then back across to catch the ferry home again.

Buses are good across Ireland (although I can’t say we saw many outside of the cities and towns), so we were definitely pleased to have the flexibility of the car.

The roads were in much better condition that our county’s back home – no potholes – and everything was pretty straightforward if you’re used to driving on the left.

Here’s some of my tips and learnings from driving in Ireland for the first time.

Driving in Ireland tips

Before you go

Make sure to check what you need in your car. I struggled to find clear guidance. The gov.uk website told me I needed the same stuff you need in Europe, with warning triangles, hi vis vests and loads of other things that aren’t specifically required in the UK. The RAC and Irish websites played down these. So I asked around and made sure I had sensible things, and checked anything that would invalidate my insurance or breakdown cover rather than going to town with everything given the Irish who responded to my questions scoffed at the list of items I was checking. But guidance changes, so keep an eye on websites in case rules change.

Print off key documents

I did have to get short term overseas breakdown cover for my car, as I usually wouldn’t need to include that. My insurance already covered me so that wasn’t too bad but worth checking all your small print.  

Make sure you’ve got your driving licence with you. You never know when you’ll need to show it.

And don’t forget, if you’re travelling out of the cities and towns, expect journey times to be longer than you might think when planning itineraries. It’s like travelling in the UK, roads are windy, hilly, narrow, and in tourist places can get busy and clogged up.

While you’re there

(Obviously if you’re driving in Ireland and not from a left hand driving country, then the big thing to remember is driving on the left).

If your car will switch to km rather than miles it might be worth changing it over. Although I didn’t think about that in advance so ended up just seeing miles on my dashboard. It worked fine using a post it reminder of the limits, and the sat nav told me the limits in mph. Watch out if your satnav isn’t very up to date because mine was often out for the limits – presumably they’ve been updated a lot since my satnav last was! So rely on road signs.

Ireland have different speed limits for different roads (and more road grades) so make sure you know which roads are what.

Turn off your sat nav’s speed camera warnings. Evidently this isn’t allowed in Ireland. I can’t say we saw many though and we travelled some way around the south and western parts before heading back to Dublin.

Sat nav in Mazda CX5s are awful.  Mine hated Anglesey, and sometimes decided to hate places in Ireland too – Galway it didn’t like, trying to send me on a 3 hour trip to somewhere 20 minutes away. If you have a satnav like mine, have a back-up unless you fancy spending a lot more time just ambling around the streets. Google maps worked fine on N’s phone (I don’t like it via the satnav) or old fashioned street maps if you can find a book.

Work out how you’ll deal with tolls because there’s a few around Ireland.  Most you just pay as you use them – I used my contactless Hyperjar card, some take cash too at the manned plaza lanes.  There’s also the M50 around Dublin and for that you need to pay afterwards at either Payzone outlets or online at etolle.ie.  You can set up a visitor toll pass, but I found it way too complicated to set up.  I did worry, because I thought I’d set up automatic payment on the website, but then my journey didn’t seem to appear for ages. Eventually it all went through ok, but they just take the money up to a month after using the toll, so paying adhoc as you need to might be easier.

If you’re roadtripping and following coastal routes like the Wild Atlantic Way, don’t think you’ll be right along the coast all the way. Much is slightly inland, although obviously you can stop in villages, towns and along the actual coast.

Amusing or interesting things about driving in Ireland

The hard shoulder is regularly used for moving over and letting people pass.  I didn’t really see much need because the roads were we were weren’t particularly busy or slow. We’d never use the hard shoulder in the UK unless broken down.

Lots of people ignored orange and red lights.  I have no idea why, or how they don’t get caught.

Traffic lights don’t go through amber before green, Just straight red to green. 

Compared to the UK, drivers more frequently let people turn across or join traffic queues. People in the UK are a lot grumpier about that.

I was surprised at how few UK cars we saw, considering the number going over on the ferry.  We only saw one the whole week while out driving, until we got back nearer Dublin again.

There’s lots of free parking on some roads where in the UK we’d have permit or paid parking, or just none.  

My experience of the car parks we went in were that they were often awkward and very tight spaces. Obviously this seems to be more and more prevalent as cars have got bigger, but it felt even more so in Ireland (and my car’s not that huge, being a small SUV).

When we were there, petrol was more expensive than diesel. I don’t know if that’s a normal thing, but a bit frustrating for me given I’d only recently switched from diesel to petrol.

The petrol stations we went in had huge shops, selling a lot more than ones I’ve been in back home. And the people working there were much friendlier and chatty!

In contrast motorway service stations can be tiny compared with UK ones. And these are a proper service station with petrol station, somewhere to eat and toilets, not just a petrol station with one loo. I mean the one we stopped at had queuing out the door for the women’s toilets – so long I gave up bothering to wait. I’ve never seen that at motorway service stations in the UK. The service station we went to near Dublin was lovely though.

A bonus though, the fuel at the motorway service stations we dropped in at weren’t any more expensive than normal petrol stations.

We loved our roadtrip, and wished we’d had more time to spend over there. Many another time we’ll go back.If you’re after more specific trips and guidance on driving in Ireland, you can check out this guide for tourists.

You can read more about our trip and where we visited here.