Google Street View service to launch in Ireland

Irish Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin is set to launch the service at Google's European headquarters in Dublin.

The service, which allows users to navigate the country's most famous cities from the comfort of their PC, provides 360-degree images from a street-level view.

The images, which have been collected since 2009 by a number of camera-equipped cars, have gathered information from Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galaway and Waterford.

Since its US launch in 2007, the service has caused controversy around the globe, with hundreds of thousands of users in German requesting that images of their homes be removed from the service.