Finally the sun came out. The memory of the cold and wet first two days seemed far away, but the deed had already been done. Sebastien Loeb was already cruising to victory, the 48th win in his WRC career and Citroen's 54th. This was the climax of a really strange event. Nobody knew what the weather promised to inflict, but there was quite a chance the ultra high speed puddle strewn asphalt stages might be covered in snow. In the end the Pirelli tyre supplier produced snow tyres - and found the drivers wanted to use them as they felt more confident! Ford came with hopes of challenging the Citroens, but once again it all went wrong! Jari-Matti Latvala stormed into the lead but then damaged the suspension, team leader Mikko Hirvonen hassled Loeb's teammate Dani Sordo hard until he was delayed by power steering failure.

Nothing seems to have changed. The official Subaru and Suzuki teams may have left the world championship scene since last year but Citroen and Ford were again the dominant participants, and Citroen were well ahead in the results. Ireland continues to struggle with a conflict between its natural beauty and its penetrating rain, and at rally time the rain once again had the upper hand. It may have only been 15 months since the world championship last visited the "Emerald Isle" but the only change was that hazardous puddles in the road had replaced the muddy patches. The event proved to be very fast, with the winner's average speed of 110.53kph making it the fastest asphalt WCR event ever held. Every driver had stories about heart stopping moments when unexpected lakes of water were lying just where they wanted to brake their cars the hardest. And the most familiar scene of all was Sebastien Loeb pulling effortlessly away from all his challengers.

At the start of Day 3 Atkinson immediately got ahead of Henning Solberg in to fourth place but on the penultimate stage he went off the road again and was back in fifth again. Henning's fourth place was his best result on asphalt, Ogier's sixth place his best result on still only his ninth WCR event while Al Qassimi's eighth place and one Drivers' point the first such achievement for an Arab driver on an asphalt World rally. The best local driver was Eamonn Boland in ninth, a lone Subaru Impreza WRC in the top ten. All eight registered drivers finished, scoring points for their teams a relief for Aava (10th), Latvala (14th) and Rautenbach (18th) after their early problems. Outside the individual teams Citroen drivers scored a total of 23 points against Ford drivers' 16!

Ireland counted for the secondary Junior WRC, but a poor entry of only seven competitors turned up. Citroen are no longer supporting the JWRC, instead helping drivers to compete in the national French championship, but Suzuki were with a new team, and brought two or their three regular drivers to this event. Now in a Suzuki the former Citroen driver Aaron Burkart led almost all the way, slowed only when he went off the road for a while. Burkart finished in front of Citroen privateer Martin Prokop. The Dutch Federation (KNAF) team driver Hans Weijs jr had a Citroen on this event (in fact one of Burkart's old cars) and took the lead on Day 1 but crashed heavily on Day 2. The star of the show, however, was Kevin Abbring, who had his 20th birthday just days before the event started, in his Renault Clio R3. He was quite the fastest driver in the category, but his car stopped on the first day for no apparent reason. Suzuki's Italian driver Simone Bertolotti was third, finishing in front of Yoann Bonato, who lost time off the road on Day 1. In the non-championship Group N category, the fastest driver was Niall McShea in a Proton Satria Neo Super 2000. He was not only leading the local drivers after the first stage but unexpectedly found himself lying third overall. McShea was then forced to stop when he had an ECU fail on stage three and after restarting on Day 2 he crashed and retired. The category was won by former JWRC driver Shaun Gallagher in a Mitsubishi Evo IX.

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