You're looking at that new car and there's this big space on the dashboard where the onboard navigation system would normally reside.
It's just another few thousand euro for the system, and then you can roam free throughout the country without ever looking at a map again. You'll just have the dulcet tones of the onboard computer telling you when to turn, how long till your next turn, how close you are to your destination and so on.
Well, that's it in theory anyway. In practice, if you want to go anywhere beyond Dublin and the M50 you're back to the paper maps again. In the words of the ancient mariners - beyond here there be dragons. So if you want that onboard navigation system for anything other than impressing your friends with the look of it - save your money.
But why is it that these systems work happily in eastern Estonia, southern Slovakia and lower Lithuania, but not in mid-Mayo? Ireland is, after all, one of the world leaders in digital mapping. The Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSI) has digitally mapped the entire country to a very fine level of detail and this is commercially available to anyone.
The answer lies in a number of quarters - and none of them are entirely to blame. These include the auto companies, the various companies that offer the software which runs the onboard navigation systems, and the OSI itself.
Onboard navigation systems use the global positioning system (GPS) to pinpoint exactly where the vehicle is on the earth's surface. GPS was developed by the US Department of Defence as a worldwide all-weather navigation, positioning and timing resource, primarily for military use. It is based on a constellation of 24 satellites orbiting the Earth which act as reference points.
By measuring the travel time of signals transmitted from a number of satellites, a receiver can measure its distance from each satellite and combine these measurements to calculate its latitude, longitude, altitude, course and speed. GPS positions can be accurate to just a few metres.
The GPS element of onboard navigation systems will work anywhere that a satellite signal can be received. However, all that the GPS system itself tells you is your position on the earth's surface in terms of longitude and latitude. Great for sailors, but telling a motorist that they are 57 degrees 6 minutes and 4 seconds north and 8 degrees 2 minutes and 42 seconds west is not much use to them.
What is needed to make GPS useful to motorists is a digital map of the area they are in. This digital map contains map references for every single location on every road along with other information such as the names of towns, villages, streets, roads and so on.
By combining this digital map and all of its information with the GPS system the motorist knows exactly where they are and how to get where they are going at all times.
These digital maps are available to motorists throughout Europe - with the exception of Ireland. The onboard navigation systems come pre-loaded with the software for the country in which the car has been bought and a CD player in the boot allows for the software for other countries to be loaded as and when it is needed.
These CDs are commercially available from international companies such as TeleAtlas, Mapflow, and Navtech who in turn purchase the information from national mapping organisations such as our own OSI and augment it with their own enhancements.
So why don't these companies offer CDs for Ireland? The answer lies in the scale of the market and a chicken and egg-like problem which faces all of the players. The CDs aren't available, so the auto companies see no reason to install the navigation systems as standard even on more expensive models; there is not a large enough installed base of navigation systems to attract the mapping CD suppliers to enter the market, and there is insufficient demand from those suppliers to attract the OSI into developing a consumer version of its mapping data.
"Digital mapping is too expensive and the market is too small to interest the main suppliers," says Gary Delaney of Cork-based vehicle tracking and navigation specialist CharterNav. "Some of these companies have included data for the east coast and greater Dublin areas but that's about the limit of it. It really is a question of cost versus sales volume. We've recognised this problem for quite some time now and have developed our own handheld product which is based on a PDA device such as a Palm or HP iPaq."
This product, the NavMan GPS comes with Smartpath software and detailed mapping for Ireland and street level mapping for Europe and Britain. It allows users to plan and track journeys from one city or town to another, or simply guide you from one location in a city to another with street level detail and instructions. In addition to knowing how to get to your destination, you will also know where you are with an accuracy of five metres 95 per cent of the time.
It is also quite affordable, costing just €1,400 - and if you already own a Palm or iPaq the cost is almost halved.
While the CharterNav system offers an alternative to standard onboard navigation systems, Delaney still believes that more needs to be done. "There is a transport policy dimension to this," he says. "Onboard navigation systems can assist greatly with road safety and there should be a policy decision that the mapping data be available at an affordable cost to consumers. At present the pricing would be in thousands of euro, if this were brought down to €300 to €400 it could transform the market."
For the moment, however, if you're looking for an onboard navigation system for Ireland don't bother - it doesn't exist.
But if you want a system that will sit on your dashboard and give you good directions around the country, then the NavMan GPS is certainly worth looking at. In the meantime, you can save your money on that optional extra.