Documentation

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants like Claude connect to external data sources and tools. Instead of copying data into your prompt, your AI queries live data directly — realtime train times, current weather, live energy stats.

IrishMCP hosts MCP servers built specifically for Ireland's public APIs and open data sources, so you don't need to run anything yourself.

New to MCPs or curious how they work under the hood? These deep-dives explain the protocol and walk through real IrishMCP implementations.

• How MCPs work — explained like you are 5A friendly, jargon-free intro to the Model Context Protocol.
• Deep dive: two Irish MCPs under the hoodTechnical walkthrough comparing Irish Rail (live XML API) vs HSE Service Finder (curated dataset).
• All posts →Updates, tutorials and news from the platform.

The fastest way to use an IrishMCP server is to add it to Claude Desktop. Find the MCP you want, click the detail page, and copy the Claude Desktop config.

Then add it to your Claude Desktop config file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Example config for Irish Rail and Luas:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "irish-rail": {
      "url": "https://irishrail-realtime.irishmcp.ie/mcp"
    },
    "luas": {
      "url": "https://luas-forecasts.irishmcp.ie/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Every live MCP on this platform is also available as a remote HTTP endpoint — no local installation needed. This is useful for production deployments, CI environments, or any MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP transport.

Each MCP's endpoint follows the pattern:

https://[mcp-name].irishmcp.ie/mcp

# Example: Irish Rail
https://irishrail-realtime.irishmcp.ie/mcp

Every live MCP has an in-browser playground on its detail page. You can type natural language queries and see the raw response from the MCP server — useful for testing before integrating into your own project.

Don't see the Irish data source you need? Use the Request MCP page to suggest it. We review all requests and prioritise based on community interest. If the data is openly available, we'll build and host it.

All MCP servers powering this platform are open source and available on GitHub. You can browse the source code, deploy your own instances, or contribute new MCPs for Irish data sources you care about.

The source code covers Irish Rail, Luas, Met Éireann, EirGrid, Dublin Bikes, CSO, Oireachtas, and the Property Price Register — all implemented as Cloudflare Workers with no external dependencies.