Nenagh To Birdhill Motorway Opens

Construction at Annaholty Bog

A 16KM section of the M7 motorway, South of the Nenagh bypass, scheduled to open in May of last year, 2009, opened yesterday in advance of the anticipated extra Easter bank holiday traffic.

This move extends the motorway from Nenagh to Birdhill in Co Tipperary, and is expected to removes about 10,000 vehicles a day from a high collision location around the area locally known as Yellow Bridge.

The original completion date was put back, due to unexpected difficulties experienced during its construction.

This continuing  project, which is part of the link between Dublin and Limerick, involves delivering, on completion, a new 28 km motorway standard cross-section on a greenfield site, with various interchanges, under-bridges and link roads. However, problems surfaced when it attempted to traverse two bogs, at Annaholty and Drominboy, to connects to a 10-kilometer section of the Nenagh Bypass and thus the unforeseen delays.

The major difficulties encountered by the construction company, Bothar Hibernian, has been the building of this road through nearly five miles of  bog land between Ballyhane, Birdhill and Annacotty,  the worst of which transpired to be an exceptionally deep and wet section, at Drominboy and forewarned locally by farmers as ” bottomless”.

As efforts continue to find a solution to the problem, the National Roads Authority made a surprise announcement that it was opening the completed 16km of the road yesterday afternoon.

While problems are understood to continue to exist with pylons still sinking, the authorities said it expects the problem at Annaholty Bog would not delay the opening of the entire M7 by the end of this current year.

Irish foundation specialist FK Lowry Piling, contracted for their client, Limerick County Council, is confident it will deliver the solution to this sinking pylon problem.