We spent a month driving in Ireland a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it. We rented our car, a VW Golf diesel, in England so I can't comment on insurance requirements except to say that I had to pay extra to drive a UK rental car in Ireland.
If you are not used to a manual change then I would recommend an automatic just to remove additional things to think about when negotiating difficult road junctions, roundabouts and hill starts.
Turning left on a red light is not allowed AFAIK, I don't recall ever seeing anyone do that.
see page 102 in the Rules of the Road for the light sequences and how to behave at them. (e.g. flashing amber means you MUST yield to pedestrians)
http://rsa.ie/Documents/Learner Drivers/Rules_of_the_road.pdf
If you are not used to a manual change then I would recommend an automatic just to remove additional things to think about when negotiating difficult road junctions, roundabouts and hill starts.
Turning left on a red light is not allowed AFAIK, I don't recall ever seeing anyone do that.
see page 102 in the Rules of the Road for the light sequences and how to behave at them. (e.g. flashing amber means you MUST yield to pedestrians)
http://rsa.ie/Documents/Learner Drivers/Rules_of_the_road.pdf