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car rental advice: pick up between Dublin and Dingle, drop off at Dublin airport

Late August, early September, 2 weeks (spending 3 nights in Dublin, then 3 nights Dingle. After, we will make our way up to Clare/Aran Islands x 3 nights, then over to Leitrim for family visit and on to Brú na Bóinne for our last two nights, leaving the car at the Dublin airport). No need for a car in Dublin: we'd like to pick up a rental car somewhere outside if Dublin on the way to Dingle. I thought we could travel from Dublin via rail to a city along the train route from Dublin to Limerick and pick up a car there, but not finding much among the familiar rental agencies (Europcar, Dan Dooley, Budget) that allow this: we feel compelled to make a side journey to Shannon airport just to pick up the car.

Any suggestions to avoid a Shannon pick up between Dublin and Dingle?

thanks in advance!

Posted by
183 posts

Probably Cork will be your best bet for this.

I'm not sure there would be much time savings to take a train out of Dublin and then find your way from the train station to a rental desk in another place (airport?) to pick up a car. And you will probably pay extra for not returning the car where you picked it up. It's not difficult to access the airport from Dublin anyways. There are direct transit links. I did something similar on my trip (no car in Dublin first, then out to airport to pick it up and on to Dingle). It worked fine.

Posted by
1172 posts

We are picking ours up at the Dublin airport on our way out of Dublin ... like you didn't want a car for our Dublin stay

Posted by
14 posts

We are in Dingle now and just went through this. We decided to train to Tralee from Dublin and rented a car in Tralee from Enterprise. Worked great! Enterprise is about 1/4th of a mile from the train station.

Posted by
75 posts

Fly Dublin to Kerry Airport (10 miles from Killarney) Hire car at airport

Or Take Train to Killarney and hire car in Killarney

Posted by
7 posts

I like the idea of a train from Dublin to Tralee and renting a car there, but it looks like a 6 hour train ride. is that correct

Posted by
8 posts

Thanks for all the suggestions
I have reserved a car in Limerick, and we'll tie the train from Dublin so we'll split up our day between train travel and car. Can't do the Tralee option because we leave Dublin on a Saturday and I didn't want to chance the shorter rental hours in Tralee (wiser travelers probably have this internalized, but weekends, holidays and smaller towns narrow your window of opportunity for rental cars!). I also looked beyond the oft mentioned Dan Dooley and Europcar and went with Enterprise, which had more locations available on line.