I would not count on day trips at the last moment from Kinsale and Dingle, especially in late September. Many tours operate during the tourist season and die down once the tourists are scarce. Why stay open if you will have no business?

There are a couple of bases that are good year-round places to pick up day tours. But Dingle and Kinsale are not them.

Have you thought of renting two cars? You could keep in touch by cell phone and have your daily itinerary mapped out for each car. If one group wanted to do something different, that would be an option not available with a van. Also, renting a van large enough for 8 people plus luggage does not seem realistic. If you want all people in one vehicle you probably want to rent a mini-bus and driver.

You do have some options but choose carefully at the end of September.

I recently had a lengthy phone conversation with Conn at easytourireland.com about this very subject. His company has a franchise agreement with Hertz. He is very knowledgeable about Ireland in general, and rental vehicles in particular. Unfortunately, (with Hertz anyway) the largest van available is considered an 8-9 passenger van. He indicated that 6 adults with "normal" luggage would be optimal. Seven may work, but if you get up to 8, you must be very careful about the amount of luggage you have along or you could be in for difficulty. Another company with a similar offering using Hertz is journeythroughireland.com. We have used them twice and no problems, no surprises.

As for my experience, we did rent a larger van, supposedly a 9 passenger in Glasgow Scotland last Oct. It was a diesel automatic on a mercedes chasis. There were 5 adults, and we would have fit comfortably in a 7 passenger van, the next size down that we had requested, but we were upgraded to the larger van for no extra charge. In that van, with our volume of luggage, I think 7 adults would have been the max. I was worried about driving the larger vehilcle on the wee roads of Scotland, but had no scrapes & not even any close-calls! Roads in Ireland would be similar in width, as I have driven over most of Ireland in 4 different trips.

My advice, if you try to go with one vehicle: you will need to be creative in packing-probably one 18"-20" main bag, and maybe one small personal bag for each adult, and try to distribute the kids clothes among the adults luggage, and plan to make the sacrifice of doing laundry often as the trade off for only having to rent one vehicle and you can save $'s by only putting one driver on the rental contract. You say the youngest is 3 months old, so car seat considerations need to be considered. Another thought is a car top luggage carrier, but do not know if that is an option on a rental vehicle, in Ireland. Might be a good question for Conn.

Good luck! Dan

Some forum members have used this one: http://www.corkcoachhire.com/ Contact: Jerry info@corkcoachhire.com 

They loved the service, the driver and highly recommended it. The company was recommended to me by the chauffeur company that I used to deal with who closed.