Dublin Airport to Dún Laoghaire

Dún Laoghaire sits at the far south end of Dublin Bay, about 21 km from the airport around the curve of the water — a Victorian harbour town of two long granite piers, the People's Park, the old sea baths, and a coastal walk that runs on toward Sandycove and the Forty Foot. It is also the far corner of the county from the airport, which is the one fact that shapes every option below: you are crossing the whole city to reach it, whether by coach, by meter, or behind your own wheel. Anyone staying on the seafront faces the same long run south; note that ferries to Britain no longer sail from Dún Laoghaire but from Dublin Port.

The 702 goes down the coast, not through the middle of the city

The single best thing about this route is that Aircoach's 702 reaches Dún Laoghaire directly, with no change on the way. It leaves from the Aircoach bays outside both terminals, drops through the Port Tunnel to skip the city core, then works down the coast road via Ballsbridge and Booterstown to the seafront. Adult singles start at €11.80 online, and the journey to Marine Road, opposite County Hall, takes roughly 52 to 65 minutes. What you give up is frequency: the 702 runs about hourly, from 03:20 to 23:30 from Terminal 1, so it pays to check the day's departures and plan your landing around one rather than assuming a coach will be idling at the kerb. The alternative to the 702 is the reason it matters so much — without it you are looking at a city bus plus a DART transfer, a slow stitched-together crawl across the whole city, which no one wants with cases and a ferry to catch.

A metered taxi when the timetable does not line up

If your flight lands in the gap between coaches, the rank at arrivals in both terminals is the straightforward answer. Allow €45 to €58 by day, it is a really long haul to the bottom of the bay, so this is one of the pricier town runs from the airport. Drivers almost always take the tunnel-and-M50 loop rather than fighting through the middle of the city, which keeps the time closer to 45 minutes; daytime traffic through the coastal suburbs is what pushes the meter toward the top of that range. For two or three people with luggage arriving off-timetable, the split cost often lands close to what four separate coach tickets would run, and you are set down at your door on the seafront instead of at a stop.

Locking the fare in advance

Anyone landing with a family and a fixed onward plan tends to want the arrival time settled before they fly. A pre-booked private transfer does exactly that: a people-carrier from Welcome Pickups or a local Dublin firm meets you in arrivals, takes the whole group and the luggage in one vehicle, and holds a set price of roughly €50 to €68 rather than leaving you to gamble on an hourly coach or split across two taxis. For a group of four with cases, that fixed number and the single vehicle are the appeal — one confirmed price for the long run south, sorted before departure.

Driving, and why a car opens up the coast beyond the town

Hiring at the airport makes most sense if Dún Laoghaire is a base rather than the whole trip. The desks (Hertz, Enterprise, Sixt among them) sit in the car-hire compound reached by shuttle from arrivals, with rates from about €35 a day when booked ahead. The drive is the same 45-minute M50 loop the taxis take. What the car buys you is everything past the town: seafront parking in Dún Laoghaire is plentiful, and from there the coast road carries on through Killiney and Bray into Wicklow, the stretch where public transport thins right out. If your plan is the harbour, the piers, and a day or two of pottering, the 702 covers it and you can skip the hire desk entirely; if you want the wider south coast, the car earns its keep.

The short version: the 702 is the route that makes Dún Laoghaire easy — check its hourly times before you fly, and keep the taxi rank in mind as the fallback for the hours it does not run.