You should both come to Galway, it's a great little town and has been sunny for at least the last 2 months!
But back to the question of getting into Irish universities. As has been stated, Irish students do 7 subjects in the Leaving Cert and the top 6 are added together to give you a CAO score out of 600. So, when the Leaving Cert results come out that big computer in the CAO building lists all the applicants for a course according to the number of CAO points that they got. The points that the last person who got into a course had is what we refer to as the 'points for course x,y, or z'. The universities lay down the (fairly low) matriculation standards and agree on the number of places available but after that don't have control over who gets in or not. The average points for a course have no impact, they're just a point of interest that the papers print.
Now, from what I know of the system, they 'translate' UK grades into Irish points. I believe the A*=150 points is actually based on the fact that UK universities (think it was Oxford) decided the Leaving Cert was wort 2/3s of an A Level. So I don't think that it was the government (of which I am certainly no cheerleader) trying to stop the number of EU students.
Hope everyone is successful in their applications.