Unfortunately rural Ireland is also a pretty dangerous place to walk due to some pretty high speeds on some pretty small roads :-/ . Too often the council "upgrades" a road and in the process takes it away from people walking or biking.
Same. I had a beautiful home on a few acres of land with an old bog road from the 19th century near me (it's in the video I linked a lot) and cycling on that was a dream, but as soon as I tried to use the cycle lane to Tullamore it was a disaster of lorries and tractors trying to use said lane to pass each other.
I made a video about some of these roads at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba7xHUdeew if you're curious.