I'm not worried about a .ie as I think the prices are silly and this is for personal use, not business, so a locator like .ie is irrelevant to me.
If you don't benefit from having the ccTLD, you keep far more options open by going with a more generic TLD (e.g. .com). The high price for a .ie is down in part to the hoops you have to jump through to prove rights to the name, so if it's for personal use you could struggle to get a suitable domain name in any case (where you've free reign on a .com, as long as it's not already taken).
I also want to ensure security is adequate. How is this handled? Should I be more worried about attacks against my laptop than the domain host ?
I suppose this one depends on what you consider 'adequate'.
You're probably at far more risk on your own end (the laptop) than via the domain hosting, but taking some relatively simple steps (for both) and you should be more than ok. I wouldn't suggest picking your host based on security concerns (it's never going to be THAT big an issue for a personal site), but once you have your host selected and know how the server is set up then you can take some simple steps to ensure it's secure.
(To be honest, the vast majority of issues are due to the code used on a site [i.e. javascript code is notorious for leaving 'back doors' that can be exploited] allowing for malicious code injection, not related to the 'hosting' itself)
Does anyone have recommendations based on personal experience ?
I'd agree with your decision to avoid .ie unless you get a clear benefit from it. However, not knowing what you intend to site for (even if it is 'personal'), it's hard to know for sure.
On the security, I'd really not dwell on that one 'too much'. Whichever hosting service you go with they will have security systems in place and you can step it up as much as you fancy (e.g. an hour playing with your .htaccess file and you'd soon have bumped up the standard security as long as you don't mind learning a bit more about what happens behind the scenes). Spend a bit of time googling on the most common issues/problems with sites (and the corresponding protection against it) and you'll be fine.
As for an actual host... it really depends on your specific needs. There will be slight differences between all the packages that could make one more beneficial than others for your circumstances (personally I prefer Unix based hosting over Windows based, but again, it's subjective). It's a competitive market where the offers change frequently, so a bit of leg work to be done to find the 'best' deal for you.
As a start, you can check the [broken link removed] provided on boards.ie. It only has Irish hosts, at the moment at least, so you might find better value by getting your hosting overseas (for a personal site, SEO won't be a major concern [I'll assume], so having a non Irish IP probably won't be an issue).