National Primary Road - History

History

From the 1920s through to 1977, Irish roads had been numbered under a system of Trunk Roads and link roads (see Trunk Roads in Ireland for details). The introduction of a National Route numbering system had been discussed since the late 1960s. Legislation to allow its introduction was passed in 1974: the Local Government (Roads and Motorways) Act 1974, which introduced the concepts of motorways and national roads into Irish law. The routes of the original 25 national primary roads were defined via Statutory Instrument (the Local Government (Roads and Motorways) Act, 1974 (Declaration of National Roads) Order, 1977) in 1977 and the new numbers began to appear on road signs shortly thereafter, with the N4 road and N6 road the first to be signed. The first motorway, the M7 Naas bypass, opened in 1983.

Since the introduction of the National Route numbering system, the system has remained relatively unchanged in its overall design, although as new bypasses open the various routes themselves have undergone changes. The legislative basis for the system changed in 1993 with the Roads Act 1993. This act introduced a major change: a new body, the National Roads Authority (NRA), was set up to manage the national road network. It also made motorways integral parts of national routes (previously they had been a separate classification) and introduced the new classifications of Regional road and local road. In 1994, three national secondary roads (N57, N64, N79) were reclassified as national primary roads and subsequently renumbered (N57 to N26, N64 to part N18, N79 to N30) while a section of the N60 between Castlebar and Westport in Co. Mayo was reclassified as the N5. Four other national primary routes (N27, N28, N29, N31) were added to the network: a section of the R600 regional road between Cork city centre and Cork Airport was reclassified as the N27, the N28 was partly newly constructed and partly a reclassified section of regional road (R609), the N29 was newly constructed and the N31 was made up of roads previously classified as regional roads. The N32, which had been constructed from new as an extension of the M50 Northern Cross Route project became part of the system in 1996. The N33 also became part of the system in the late 1990s, although it was only defined in the current definition of the state's national roads, the Roads Act 1993 (Classification of National Roads) Order 2006. In 2012, the N40 was created which completely encompasses the Cork South Ring Road. Parts of the N22 and N25 were reclassified to create this road. To date it remains the newest national primary road. Route numbers N34 to N49 (excluding N40) remain unallocated.