A letter to the Daily Telegraph recently claimed that in Irish pubs, you don't have to pay after every drink, but only at the end of your drinks. We should be trying to attract more tourists to our shores with such useful titbits of information.

Visitors to Trinity College are invited to scan in pages from the Book of Kells to their own personal computers.

You can rent metal detectors from the National Museum in Dublin's Kildare Street.

Kate Kearney's cottage is the only State-owned dwelling in Ireland officially approved for devil worship.

Try bargaining in the popular Grafton Street store, Brown Thomas.

In some understaffed parishes in counties Roscommon and Leitrim, tourists can apply to become a "priest for a day", saying Mass, hearing confessions and performing marriage ceremonies.

The famous Killarney jarveys are known to tip American visitors handsomely for the privilege of taking them around the lakes.

Visitors to the attractive Kildare village of Bodenstown are guaranteed a warm welcome if they assume a march formation and wear bright orange sashes.

Good bargains are to be had at the car-boot sale which takes place every Sunday morning in the grounds of Aras an Uactharain.

Houses in the sophisticated Dublin village of Dalkey are often given away to complete strangers by residents seeking a simpler lifestyle.

The State apartments of Dublin Castle offer free all-day childminding facilities to visitors eager for some time on their own.

One-night membership can be purchased at the Marino Casino, where blackjack, roulette and chemin de fer are the popular games with local high-rollers.

In Yeats Country, the One-Night Stand public house outside Easkey commemorates the poet's historic friendship with Maud Gonne.

Dublin taxi-drivers enjoy humorous remarks about their legendary scarcity and will often respond in similarly jocular vein.

Temple Bar is a fun venue for a family outing on a Saturday evening.

Book well ahead to participate in West Cork's many spontaneous street carnivals.

Even if a bed-and-breakfast establishment advertises itself as full, it is often worth asking if you may share the landlady's room.

While the Dublin Airport car park is being extended, you may park your rental car on any free runway.

If seeking a shopkeeper, publican, chemist or undertaker in a provincial town, you can save time by asking for the local "gombeen man".

Moore Street traders are obliged by Dublin Corporation statute to know all the words to "Molly Malone" and to sing them on request.

In a roadside emergency, wait beside your car at one of the country's many "halting sites".

Irish farmers are always happy to hear visitors' views on urban deprivation.

If a stranger in a public house informs you he has written a book "better than Ulysses" you should buy him drink for the rest of the evening.

At roundabouts not controlled by traffic lights, foreign-registered cars enjoy right of way.

Though Brendan Behan has been dead for nearly 40 years, all Dubliners over 30 remember him well.

Every April 4th, the self-employed community celebrates the end of the tax year with a huge outdoor party in the Phoenix Park.

It is best not to argue with a man who tells you that his pal Mick is a better poet than Seamus Heaney.

The Guinness Brewery welcomes suggestions for a new name for its stout.