N81 road (Ireland)
The N81 road is a national secondary road in Ireland, from the M50 motorway to Tullow, County Carlow, north to south. The N81 continues past Tullow for another 8 km to terminate at the village of Closh, County Carlow, where it intersects the N80. The N81 is long. The road is a dual carriageway between M50 motorway and west of Tallaght, known as the Tallaght Bypass or Blessington Road. It intersects with the M50 motorway at Junction 11. There are plans to extend the dual carriageway by to the urban boundary.
The N81 is the only major national road emanating from Dublin that is a national secondary rather than national primary road.
The official definition of the N81 from the Roads Act, 1993 Order, 2012 states:
History
Tallaght to Brittas section
In her 1999 publication South County Scrapbook, Mary McNally of Tallaght Historical Society noted that: "There was no road between the Embankment and Crooksling until about 1820 when British Army Engineers made the present road. Before 1790, the travellers going from Dublin to Blessington, Carlow and Wexford turned left at Kiltalown Cottages and climbed the steep road over Mount Seskin joining the present road at Brittas."The section of the N81 south of Tallaght which circles Verschoyle's Hill, was once the site of highwaymen, which academic Francis Elrington Ball wrote of in 1904:
The opening of the eighteenth century found this district still very wild and uncivilized, and the old coach road to Blessington which passed over Tallaght Hill, was a great resort of highwaymen. At the foot of this hill, on the Blessington side, there stood an inn, called the Red Cow, which, in the month of December, 1717, was the scene of a sanguinary encounter between a party of rapparees, who seem to have had the surrounding country at their mercy, and the forces of the Crown.
Image:Facing north underneath Corbally Bridge, part of the N81 road at The Embankment, outside Tallaght, County Dublin, Ireland.jpg|thumb|right|Corbally Bridge, supporting the N81 road at The Embankment, outside Tallaght
In his 1877 book The History and Antiquities of Tallaght in the County of Dublin, William Domville Handcock made note of a pillar stone, or gallán, which "stands opposite Mount Seskin in the loop formed by the new Tallaght road going round Tallaght Hill from Kiltalown to Brittas and the old steep road between those places ".
Trunk Road status and after
The N81 route was previously known as the T42 , trunk roads being a classification used in Ireland between 1926 and 1977.The Dublin and Blessington Steam Tramway once took this route from Terenure to Blessington before it was closed in 1932 due to falling passenger numbers.
In the 1990s when it was proposed to re-establish a tram system in Dublin due to chronic traffic congestion, the old tram route from the city centre via Terenure to Tallaght was proposed.
This route was later ruled out as a result of space constraints and the pipes under the N81 route seemingly being too old in the Terenure area, thus proving to be a great deal more expensive for utility diversion. The Luas instead was made to follow a less direct route from the City to Tallaght, following the Southern Canal ring and then moving south to Tallaght alongside the M50 Motorway.
Planned upgrade
In a Dáil Éireann debate dated 2 July 2019 it was mentioned that the N81 is one of the most dangerous roads in the State with twice the national average for single vehicle collisions and seven times the national average of head-on collisions.In 2021 Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan mentioned that the N81 Tallaght to Hollywood Cross road improvement scheme was not included in the projects to be developed during the current NDP period of 2018–2027, in effect pausing any work on the project until after this date.