Thoughts on driving plus extra sights to see in County Louth

Hello! I’ll be visiting Ireland in August for 11 days, splitting my time between Galway and Dublin. I was not planning on driving and instead using public transport and day tours to get around.

However, I’ve been doing my family history and I actually know the parish my ancestors came from (and maybe townland, still trying to nail that down) and it’s Lordship in County Louth which is decently close to Dublin. It looks like it’s an hour taking the M1 up versus two and a half hours on public transport. So I’m trying to decide if I feel comfortable doing the drive or if I should spend money and hire a driver to go the places I’d like.

My question is what is the driving like up on the M1? The posted speed limit makes me nervous - I am totally comfortable driving in cities in the US (I live in Boston for anyone familiar with Boston’s particular style of roads modeled on cow paths). Highway driving triggers my anxiety since in the US you are going slow if you drive the speed limit and my comfortable internal speed is 60mph/96kpm. I’ve been reading and it sounds like that isn’t the case in Ireland.

I don’t mind driving on the opposite side - I’ve driven up on Lewis & Harris in Scotland and that was totally fine (I loved the one lane roads and always pulled over to the passing place to let the locals zoom by).

I also saw an alternate route would be to take the N2 or R108 which is a little bit longer but I don’t mind if it isn’t triggering my anxiety.

Questions are:

1. if you were an anxious driver on the highway, which route would you take, M1, N2, or R108?
2. if I rent a car for the day, I’d love to see other places around Louth. Right now I have as possibilities Monasterboice and Mellifont Abbey as well as just driving around Lordship.

I’m also not totally opposed to hiring a driver but I love the idea of just stopping when we see something interesting.

Thank you for any suggestions!