Ireland is usually travelled as Dublin plus a route west, where the landscape does the work: the Cliffs of Moher, Connemara, the Ring of Kerry and the coastal roads that link them. Dublin itself is compact, literary and pub-centred, and the distances beyond it are short by any standard.
The guides here cover Dublin and Ireland overall. Weather is the constant variable rather than season — rain is possible any month, and coastal plans work better with flexible days than fixed ones. A car makes the west genuinely accessible; public transport thins out quickly outside the main corridors. Driving is on the left, and rural roads are narrower than most visitors anticipate.