N24 route corridors unveiled for Tipperary's Kilsheelan and Carrick-on-Suir Bypasses

Caption for photo above: James Kinsella, Áine Kinsella and John Dwyer from Carrick-on-Suir study the public display of the Preferred Transport Solution for the N24 Cahir to Waterford Project in the Carraig Hotel last Friday, January 26. Picture Anne Marie Magorrian

The Preferred Transport Solution unveiled for the N24 between Cahir and Waterford proposes bypasses of Carrick-on-Suir and Kilsheelan to the north of the town and village to relieve traffic congestion.

More than 400 people attended the six-hour long public consultation event at Carrick-on-Suir’s Carraig Hotel last Friday to check out how the N24 plan will potentially impact their homes, businesses and communities.

Tipperary County Council Senior Roads Engineer John Nolan was among the team of council and Arup design team experts busy throughout the afternoon and evening meeting with the public and answering their queries on the route corridor.

He said the start and finish of both bypasses will be quite close to Kilsheelan and Carrick in line with Government Climate Change policy to reuse existing roads as much as possible and reduce the length of new road builds.

Kilsheelan Bypass will start from the Kilheffernan area and run just north of the village. The corridor is between Kilsheelan Church and Kilsheelan Rail Crossing. The bypass corridor ends and rejoins the existing N24 at Ballynaraha.

A 7km long bypass is proposed for Carrick-on-Suir with the start point on the Carrick-on-Suir side of Dovehill Design Centre just before Ballinderry Bridge.

The corridor skirts the northern hinterland of the town passing through the townlands of Deerpark, Ballyrichard, Cregg and Knocknaconnery.

It will rejoin the existing N24 Carrick to Piltown Bypass road in the vicinity of Killonerry.

Mr Nolan pointed out the N24 upgrade will have a huge impact on the residents of six occupied homes between Cahir and Waterford that are located within the Preferred Transport Solution route corridor.

He acknowledged some of these residents are really devastated. While it didn’t necessarily mean these residents will end up losing their homes, they will be very affected.

He said the design project team is working with these people and the county council will be insisting the team minimise the road project’s impact on their properties as much as possible.

Mr Nolan explained that one of the key reasons for the decision to bypass Kilsheelan and Carrick-on-Suir was that traffic studies show the vast majority of traffic driving through the village and town have no intention of stopping in them.

Traffic studies show that approximately 8,600 vehicles (including about 800 lorries), drive directly through Kilsheelan on the N24 daily. And 90% of trips in both directions through Kilsheelan want to bypass the village. And approximately 10,800 vehicles drive through Carrick-on-Suir on the N24 daily with 51% of those travelling through Carrick from both directions wanting to go around the town rather than through it.

Another key factor behind bypassing Carrick is the fact that 28% of all traffic collisions on the N24 in the town involve pedestrians and four pedestrians have died in accidents on the N24 in the town since 2016.

One of the visitors to the Carrick-on-Suir public consultation event was Ballydine farmer David Kehoe, part of whose land falls within the proposed N24 route corridor.

However, he was relieved to learn the bypass won’t impact his farm as much as his family originally feared.

When the N24 upgrade and Carrick Bypass were first proposed in 2003, a much larger part of his and his parents’ land holding was included in the route study area and he feared the road would divide their land.David’s parents Brian and Anne run a quarry opposite the MSD pharmaceutical plant.

He said the design team don’t really know how much land he will lose yet but it’s estimated it may be one acre. He believed in the circumstances, it was the best possible outcome.

Maps of the original proposed N24 upgrade route his family received when he was a child are still at his home. The inclusion of the Kehoe’s land in the N24 study area made it difficult over the years to get planning for projects as the land was sterilised for development

“I was planning a new milking parlour and it caused havoc getting planning because the route corridor was so wide,” he recalled.