Just logged in today and saw the new feature.
I think this is going to be very helpful for website that are targeting (e.g. Ireland) a certain location but the website is hosted in a different country like USA.

The new feature can be found under the Tools menu:

Quote from Google:

Some sites target users for a particular geographic location.    

For example, a site may target all users within a specific country,or it may target only those users who reside within a very small    

geographic area within that country.    

If your site is targeting users within a particular geographic area,please provide us with the relevant information below,using only the fields that apply to your target audience.

So how will that help and improve your website ranking?

Simple: If you have a .com or any other TLD’s website and is hosted outside Ireland, but your intentions is to target the Irish audience, then by just telling Google that, your website should come up in the Ireland results, but of course that will also depend on how well your website is optimised for that search phrase.

Will keep an eye on things to see how this is going to work out for us in Ireland.