Well it only took 47 years, six Australian and two New Zealand trips to prompt me to make the 50 minute flight from LHR to Dublin for a golfing stag trip.
We played Portmarnock and Royal Dublin. Being early in the season both courses were far from their best but a dry winter meant the courses were well presented, firm and dry.
Portmarnock is a quality set up and we played the Yellow and Blue nines. Things got eventful playing the second when I heard a yelp from the four ahead of us. I turned to my fourball and said "either someone's had a hole in one or broken an ankle" fortunately the stag holed his wedge for an ace! The Yellow is the spare nine but a good loop and certainly not a fill in. The Blue is of the highest quality and difficult to score on.
Royal Dublin has a great front nine with tight drives and humps and hollows everywhere. A swan swimming in the pond beside the 9th green was a little surreal! The back nine is flatter and far more open but at 3900+ yards off the stones.
I was surprised by the lack of customer service at both clubs, at Portmarnock we were booked for 8.06 and 8.13, now 8 x €115 is a fair bit of income on 1st March so getting a member of staff in at 7.30 to get the coffee on and welcome guests shouldn't be too difficult to arrange. Instead we managed to grab €2 plastic cup coffees from the pro shop machine, I maybe over sensitive but 8 of us spent €1470 on golf and lunch. Royal Dublin had a €1 coffee machine in the locker room but even arriving at 8.30 the only member of staff was an eastern European lady cleaner who couldnt tell me if we were in the men's locker room. Both clubs appeared to have exclusively eastern European bar and catering staff, although pleasant and efficient there was no local input.