page_title: History of roads in Ireland
section_title: Motorways in the Republic of Ireland
hierarchical_section_title: History of roads in Ireland / 20th century onwards / Motorways in the Republic of Ireland
caption_attribution_description: English: M8 looking south Deutsch: M8 zwischen Cashel und Cahir
context_page_description: There have been routes and trackways in Ireland connecting settlements and facilitating trade since ancient times and the country now has an extensive network of public roads connecting all parts of the island.
context_section_description: The most recent development of the Irish roads network involved the construction of motorways (Irish: mótarbhealach, plural: mótarbhealaí). The first motorway section in the state was the M7 Naas by-pass, which opened in 1983. Several major routes between Dublin (major inter-urban routes) and other cities have been upgraded to motorway standard. Since December 2010, all motorways in Ireland are part of, or form, national primary roads. There was a considerable amount of motorway (and dual carriageway) construction between the years 2000 and 2010: at the end of 2003 there were 176.33 km of motorway in the Republic and 244.79 km of dual carriageway forming part of national roads. By the end of 2004 there were 191.71 km of motorway and 285.49 km of dual carriageway. This was extended, by the end of 2005, to 246.62 km of motorway and 308.4 km of dual carriageway (including 2+1 roads) and to 269.63 km of motorway and 352.91 km of dual carriageway (including 2+1 roads) by the end of 2006. By the end of 2007 there were 269.3 km of motorway, 405.62 km of dual carriageway and 38.99 km of 2+1 road. In 2008, another 125 km of newly constructed motorway were completed and some sections of dual carriageway on national routes were re-designated as motorways. In January 2009, there were 431 km of motorway and dual carriageway under construction with many more schemes at various planning stages; 145 km of newly constructed motorway and dual carriageway were completed in 2009, with another 286 km completed by December 2010. When all these roads were completed by 2010, there were a total of 916 km of motorway, high-quality dual carriageway and 2+2 roads out of approximately 2,649 km of national primary routes, about 45% of the national primary route network.
  
  In June 2007, it was announced that around 800 km of roads would be either opened as motorways or re-designated as motorways if already opened under powers granted in the Roads Act 2007. In July 2008, S.I. No. 279 of 2008 was signed: it redesignated a number of roads, either already open, under construction or proposed, as motorways. A further proposed re-designation of roads was announced in September 2008. In December 2007, it was announced that a planned high quality dual carriageway scheme between Galway and Tuam would be built as a motorway, the first such new motorway project to be announced since the early 2000s. Another new motorway, the M20, is being planned as the main route between Cork and Limerick. The major inter-urban routes, most of the Cork to Tuam section of the Atlantic Corridor along the west coast and other routes will be motorway under these proposals.
  In 2019, there was approximately 1,000 km of motorway in Ireland:
caption: The M8 near New Inn, Co. Tipperary
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "picnik.com", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}