Ireland's unique road sign system - or lack of - remains a major puzzle for tourists and natives alike, writes Rosita Boland

Magical Ireland, mysterious Ireland. Visitors to Ireland often say they are looking for these elusive, indefinable qualities. However, for many visitors - and natives - Ireland's mysteries are quite often very unromantic. There can be few motorists who have not arrived at a junction or crossroads somewhere in Ireland and thought, er, where am I going now? Not because there is a spiritual dilemma pending on the motorist's part, but because there are no road signs to indicate which direction the roads are leading to.

The charms of signpostless roads and the feckless Ireland they symbolise - sure begorrah, take it aisy, don't we have all the time in the world to be a-wanderin' the byways and boreens - wear off extremely quickly.

For a start, not everyone using the back roads of rural Ireland is a local, to whom the roads are familiar. We do, from time to time, have tourists in rural Ireland, strange as it may sound, given that most overseas visitors these days tend to stay in urban areas. Would that have anything to do with the fact you're guaranteed to get lost once you leave the cities? Presumably tourists don't much enjoy wasting their holiday time trying to find their way around: it's often hard enough to concentrate on driving on a different side of the road, without constantly stopping because of wondering where the said road is going.

Even when there are signs, they can sometimes make no sense. You drive along and see: Bally-where-ever is 15 kilometres away. Ages, hours later, when your hair is going grey and your beard reaches your knees, you pass another sign, pointing in the same direction, and see that it says Bally-where-ever - 17 kilometres. Didn't anybody notice when they put them up? Or has the village in question grown legs and moved a few kilometres away of its own volition?

There are also the jokers who turn signs round, thus sending the unsuspecting far out of their way - but at least in those cases, the signs are there to be moved. It's the no-signs-at-all scenario that is most familiar.

It's not only tourists who are affected by poor signposting. Anyone who drives around the country frequently for work and dares attempt to get to their destination via a quieter back-roads route, or a short-cut, is almost certainly fated to regret it. The short-cut in Ireland is never short, but the tempers of those who attempt them are bound to become so.

So who has responsibility for signing our roads? It used to be what was then Bord Fáilte, some 20 years ago. Nowadays, the National Roads Authority look after the signs which go on motorways and national roads; those prefixed with the initial 'N'.

As these are the main commercial routes, they are the roads that generally carry the most reliable signage. The real problem is with the patchily signposted non-national roads and the little unmarked winding back-roads, that can and do make motorists very lost and very cross.

Under the umbrella of the Department of the Environment, each local authority is responsible for road signs in their own area. According to the DoE, the local authorities can avail of grants for the maintenance of signage in their area.

The question of who decides what signs should go where is down to each local authority, so if you think that one area of Ireland is better sign-posted than another, you're very likely right. That area clearly has a more diligent local authority keeping track of its signage.

The last available figures for Fáilte Ireland's Visitors' Attitude Survey, a survey taken from a cross-section of all overseas visitors to Ireland, are from 2003. Of those surveyed - short break tourists, urban tourists, those who rented houses, went on organised tours, or travelled independently by hire cars - 35 per cent found problems with directional road signs.

This is a very significant percentage when you consider that presumably only those visitors who hired cars noticed the signposts.

The Department of Environment grants to local authorities for directional signposts do not also cover signs for local tourist attractions or for accommodation, such as hotels or B&Bs.

To put up one of those signs, you have to apply to your local authority for planning permission.

You also have to pay a fee to put up a sign that advertises a business or attraction or accommodation, so economics may also have something to do with why B&Bs and hotels are sometimes impossible to find until you are literally driving past them.

That may well be why a Welsh tourist, writing a letter of complaint about poor signage to this paper recently, commented rhetorically: "We stayed in seven hotels in all, finding every one of which required many stops to ask directions. . . Is Ireland one vast treasure hunt?"