In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the bottom.

But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much on the other side of the spectrum in these studies.

See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World", "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather" about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden respectively.

Those places are very much not like the USA yet. Though as the article points out, they are definitely going in that direction.

I live in Finland, and here the kids mostly walk to/from their schools themselves and that starts around age 7.

Sometimes the kids walk alone, sometimes they pickup friends en route, or they have to take a bus/tram.