Wood's move to eight means that James Haskell comes onto the blindside flank to face Ireland, and is the only change from the team which beat Scotland in Round 1. Dylan Hartley and Courtney Lawes both start on the replacements' bench.
"Ireland away is going to be another step up," Wood said on RFUTV. "They're coming into the game off the back of a good win in Wales and they have a lot of experienced, quality players in their camp. We were pleased with the performance against Scotland but there are improvements that have to be made if we want to go to Dublin and win."
"Going into that Scotland game we were driven by the fear of not living up to what the side had produced against New Zealand and it will be a similar kind of motivation for us against Ireland again this weekend," Hartley told the RFU Podcast.
"Looking back over the performance though we maybe had a few more chances where we could have scored and been more clinical and we're always looking for areas to improve. On the whole though we were pretty happy."
All the action from the Aviva Stadium is being shown live on the BBC.
In other international news, Vasily Artemyev has been chosen to start on the right wing as Russia travel to Bucharest to play Romania in the second round of the European Nations Cup. Russia beat Spain 13-9 in Round 1, and will be looking to take another step forward on the road to Rugby World Cup 2015 with another win this weekend.
ENGLAND TEAM TO PLAY IRELAND
Six Nations
Aviva Stadium, Dublin
Sunday, February 10th, 2013
Kick off 3:00pm
15 Alex Goode (Saracens)
14 Chris Ashton (Saracens)
13 Brad Barritt (Saracens)
12 Billy Twelvetrees (Gloucester)
11 Mike Brown (Harlequins)
10 Owen Farrell (Saracens)
9 Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers)
1 Joe Marler (Harlequins)
2 Tom Youngs (Leicester Tigers)
3 Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers)
4 Joe Launchbury (London Wasps)
5 Geoff Parling (Leicester Tigers)
6 James Haskell (London Wasps)
7 Chris Robshaw (Harlequins)(capt)
8 Tom Wood (Northampton Saints)
Replacements
16 Dylan Hartley (Northampton Saints)
17 David Wilson (Bath)
18 Mako Vunipola (Saracens)
19 Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints)
20 Thomas Waldrom (Leicester Tigers)
21 Danny Care (Harlequins)
22 Toby Flood (Leicester Tigers)
23 Manu Tuilagi (Leicester Tigers)
