Ireland MCP Server

Ireland MCP

Ireland MCP is a free, read-only MCP server that lets AI assistants answer questions with live Irish public data and citations.

Hosted endpoint: https://func-ireland-mcp-aofsjpwgy4hva.azurewebsites.net/mcp Transport: Streamable HTTP. Auth: none. Writes: none. Website: https://lemon-meadow-03b2b8903.3.azurestaticapps.net (the planned irishopendata.ie domain is not live yet; see docs/domain-go-live.md). Registry: io.github.c-mongan/ireland-mcp on the official MCP Registry.

Try it in 60 seconds

1. Add the server to your client. For GitHub Copilot CLI: copilot mcp add --transport http ireland https://func-ireland-mcp-aofsjpwgy4hva.azurewebsites.net/mcp For VS Code, add .vscode/mcp.json: { "servers": { "ireland": { "type": "http", "url": "https://func-ireland-mcp-aofsjpwgy4hva.azurewebsites.net/mcp" } } }.
2. Ask: "Using the ireland MCP tools, give me the Census 2022 profile of Ennis, Co Clare, and the Met Éireann forecast for Galway. Cite the sources."
3. Check the answer cites https://data.cso.ie/table/F1015 and the Met Éireann location-forecast URL. The forecast URL is http://; Met Éireann's https:// host currently redirects to an origin that fails TLS.

How a call flows:

flowchart TD
  Q[Client question] --> T[ireland_call / nearby / search]
  T --> V[Schema validation]
  V --> C{Cache hit?}
  C -- yes --> E[Evidence envelope]
  C -- no --> B{Circuit breaker open?}
  B -- yes --> S{Stale cache available?}
  B -- no --> U[Upstream public API: CSO, Met Éireann, PPR, ...]
  U -- ok --> E
  U -- 5xx or timeout --> R[One jittered retry]
  R -- ok --> E
  R -- still failing --> S
  U -- other error --> S
  S -- yes --> F[Stale cached result: stale=true]
  F --> E
  S -- no --> X["MCP error: isError=true, UPSTREAM_DOWN with hint; no cited result"]
  E --> A[Answer with source URL, licence, attribution, retrieved_at]

Try asking

• “What is the latest population profile for Galway city or County Cork?”
• “Are there Met Éireann weather warnings near Dublin today?”
• “What did houses sell for in Ennis last year?”
• “When is the next train from Heuston, and are there disruptions?”
• “Who are the current TDs for my constituency, and what bills are active?”
• “What protected habitats, monuments, planning applications or census areas are near this point?”

See it work

Install

Portable Copilot / MCP JSON:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ireland": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://func-ireland-mcp-aofsjpwgy4hva.azurewebsites.net/mcp",
      "tools": ["*"]
    }
  }
}

Why it is lean

Most data MCPs expose every typed tool up front. Ireland MCP keeps the default tools/list to 7 tools, 8,407 characters, about 2,102 tokens (toolsets=all is 80 tools, about 22k tokens) (npm run measure:tools). CI fails if that list grows past 16,000 characters.

Need typed tools anyway?

max_tokens defaults to about 2,000 output tokens and can be set from 100 to 8,000. Large results return truncated, counts and narrowing hints instead of flooding the context.

Architecture

The server is a stateless Azure Functions Flex app with a lean gateway in front of the source modules. The gateway owns the operation index, response budgets, cache, upstream budgets, circuit breakers, one jittered retry for transient 5xx/timeout failures and evidence envelope; every normal result includes source URL, licence, attribution and retrieval metadata.

Sources

Generated from src/registry.ts and the 29 source modules. The default nearby, search and fetch shortcuts sit above these sources.

Licence and attribution

Observability and privacy

• GET /healthz is fast liveness; GET /healthz?deep=1 performs one cheap check per source.
• A status workflow publishes status/status.json and 7-day history.
• OpenTelemetry can export MCP semantic-convention spans and operation-duration metrics to Azure Monitor.
• Tool logs and telemetry avoid argument values and IP addresses. See PRIVACY.md.
• Browser CORS is restricted by MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS; non-browser MCP clients are unaffected.

Limits

• Read-only public data only. No login-gated, paid or key-required user data.
• NTA realtime tools need a server-side NTA operator key; other tools work without keys.
• Upstream data can be delayed, provisional, incomplete or temporarily down. Stale cache is labelled stale: true.
• Property Price Register values are declared sale prices, not valuations.
• Legislation text is for retrieval and analysis, not legal advice.
• Large tables are paginated or truncated. Use fields, limit, cursor and source filters.

Run from source

Needs Node 22.12 or later.

git clone https://github.com/c-mongan/ireland-mcp
cd ireland-mcp
npm ci
npm run build
node dist/src/cli.js
npm run dev:http     # local HTTP dev server, MCP at /mcp

Development

Eval results

69 routing questions, run through a multi-round agent loop that sends the server instructions as the system prompt (2026-10-05, Azure OpenAI):

A 2026-10-07 rerun of the expanded 79-question set with 29 sources scored gpt-4.1-nano at 85% on the default surface.

gpt-5.x models reject temperature: 0. For them, set EVAL_TEMPERATURE=default, for example: AZURE_DEPLOYMENT=gpt-56-luna EVAL_TEMPERATURE=default npm run eval.

Contributing: add a source

1. Create src/sources/<id>/index.ts exporting a SourceModule with info, summary, domain, coverage, tools, optional search() and fetchById().
2. Keep every tool name source-prefixed, validate args with zod and return the evidence envelope with source URL, licence and attribution.
3. Use ctx.cachedJson / ctx.cachedText so upstream budgets, caching, circuit breakers and stale fallback apply.
4. Add fixtures and tests at the module seam, then add a server-level ireland_call test when useful.
5. Register the module in src/registry.ts, update scripts/live-sanity.mjs, eval cases and docs.
6. Run lint, typecheck, tests, build, inspector and live sanity before opening a PR.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full checklist.

Registry and publishing

Ireland MCP is listed on the official MCP Registry as a remote-only Streamable HTTP server named io.github.c-mongan/ireland-mcp (v1.1.1). Clients that browse the registry can install it by name. The future domain name is planned as ie.irishopendata/ireland after DNS verification. Publishing notes and directory checklists are in docs/publishing.md. Do not publish from a fork without changing the name and endpoint.

Credits and prior art

Thank you to the maintainers of Irish-data and public-data MCP projects that helped shape the direction:

Data comes from the publishers listed above, including CSO, data.gov.ie, Met Éireann, OPW, Irish Rail, Oireachtas, GeoHive/Tailte Éireann, National Monuments Service, NPWS, EPA, Pobal, CRO, World Bank, Eurostat, ECB, Wikidata, Kohesio, TED, JCDecaux/CityBikes and others. Please cite the publisher shown in each response.

Security

Security reports: SECURITY.md. This project is read-only, but MCP servers can still retrieve untrusted web content; clients should follow their normal MCP trust and approval model.