Roads in Ireland

The major routes were established before Irish independence and consequently take little cognisance of the border other than a change of identification number and street furniture.

Northern Ireland has had motorways since 1962, and has a well-developed network of primary, secondary and local routes.

Road construction in Northern Ireland now tends to proceed at a slower pace than in the Republic, although a number of important bypasses and upgrades to dual carriageway have recently been completed or are about to begin.

Road signs in Northern Ireland follow the same design rules as the rest of the United Kingdom.

The Republic's road signs are generally bilingual, using both official languages, Irish and English.

The Irish language names are written in italic script, the English in capitals.

There have been routes and trackways in Ireland connecting settlements and facilitating trade since ancient times.

Turnpikes operated between 1729 and 1858 when the extensive railway network made them increasingly unpopular.

[6] Specialist routes to facilitate the butter trade, which centred on Cork, were built in Munster.

The first butter road was commissioned in 1748 and was built by John Murphy of Castleisland in County Kerry.

This situation persisted until the first half of the 20th century when motorised road transport (cars, buses and trucks) gradually began to take over from railways as the most important form of land transport.

Pre-independence legislation (the Ministry of Transport Act, 1919[9]) laid the foundation for the regulation of the modern system of public roads in Ireland.

The Republic has an extensive network of public roads connecting all parts of the country.

At that time, Ireland's main cities (Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Belfast) excluding Derry were connected to Dublin with motorways or with near-motorway standard roads.

The Jack Lynch Tunnel under the River Lee in Cork was a major project outside Dublin, and a fourth crossing at Limerick under the River Shannon (known as the Limerick Tunnel) opened in 2010.

(not all road numbers are currently in use): In the Republic of Ireland, a motorway forms part of a national primary route, but is indicated by the prefix M instead of N. Motorways are the highest standard roads and certain drivers and vehicles are prohibited from using them.

This affected most of the major inter-urban routes between Dublin and various towns and cities and some of the Atlantic Corridor along the Western seaboard.

National Primary routes form the main cross country roads in Ireland and include all motorways.

National secondary roads fill in the rest of the main cross country routes in Ireland.

Almost the entire network of national secondary roads is single carriageway, although there are some short sections of dual carriageway on the Tallaght bypass section of the N81, on the N52 at Dundalk, on the N85 at Ennis, on the N62 at Athlone and on the N71 between Cork and Bandon.

Many of them have been resurfaced with higher quality pavements in recent years with relatively smooth surfaces and good road markings and signposting.

When the Fermoy (Moorepark) to Kilbehenny section of the M8 was completed, the former N8 bypass of Mitchelstown was re-classified as the N73.

A large amount of national primary routes have been replaced by motorways, which certain drivers and vehicles are prohibited from using.

[23] Local roads vary greatly in quality, from wide urban streets to very narrow, rural lanes, known as boreens in Ireland.

The first nine Trunk Roads (T1, T2, T3, T4, T4a, T5, T6, T7, T8) radiated out from Dublin (with the T8 branching off the T7 at Enniscorthy) and followed an anti-clockwise pattern.

The main roads in Northern Ireland, which connect well with those in the Republic, are classified "M"/"A"/"B" as in Great Britain.