My main experience: the Irish are very friendly and helpful.

Story (1): 1966, Dun Laoghaire, late in a rainy night, my first ever night in Ireland. We were standing near the harbour not knowing what to do, then a car stopped. A young Irishman (the first I ever talked to with the exception of the port officers) asked whether we did not know where to sleep. We didn't. He said, sorry, he couldn't accomodate us in his place but he took us in his car some miles to a patch of grass where we could safely sleep in our tent.

Story (2): 1967, Achill Island. A freak storm with a torrential rain completely destroyed our tents and an old couple in a two room cabin gave us (10!) shelter and tea and we slept on the floor in the larger of the two rooms.

Story (3): 1970, County Donegal, a village near Lake Finn. Our old Volkswagen broke down. The local "mechanic" who usually did tractor repairs looked at the car, fetched his very old "How to repair a Volkswagen" book and started to slowly understand the engine. He couldn't really repair the car (I had to replace the engine back in Germany), but after several hours trial and error work on two different days he had it going again. And we came back with the car still running. When we asked him what he would charge for all the time and the troubles he had with our car, he said, nothing. That's not enough, we said. No, really nothing he said, he had learned some new things about engines while trying to repair the car and that was compensation enough.

These stories happened on my first three trips to Ireland.

I recommend the West Coast, but the South West part of it only off season.

Wolfgang