N24 road (Ireland)

N24 road
Route information
Length:	123 km (76 mi)
Location
Primary destinations:	(bypassed routes in italics) County Limerick Limerick City Pallasgreen Oola South Tipperary Monard Limerick Junction Tipperary Town Bansha Cahir Clonmel Kisheelan Carrick-on-Suir County Kilkenny Mooncoin Terminates at N25 in Grannagh
Road network
Roads in Ireland Motorways • Primary • Secondary • Regional

Heading west on the N24 Clonmel Relief Road

The N24 road is a national primary road in Ireland forming a route from Limerick to Waterford, running through County Tipperary and passing Tipperary Town, Cahir, Carrick-on-Suir and Clonmel.

The route leaves Limerick to the southeast as William Street, Mulgrave Street and the Ballysimon Road. At the Tipperary Roundabout it crosses the Childers Road. Beyond this, the road passes over the Limerick Southern M7 ring road.

Pallasgreen and Oola are two small villages through which the route passes before reaching Tipperary. Before the town the road passes by Limerick Junction, a major railway intersection for the region. Bansha lies further southeast along the route, and the road meets the M8 Cork – Dublin motorway just outside Cahir. The N24 passes north of Cahir, turning east towards Clonmel. A bypass brings the road around the north of Clonmel, and the road continues east to Carrick-on-Suir. From here the road undulates in an east/southeast/south direction to reach Waterford. The road meets the N9 from Dublin and ends at the intersection with the N25 road.

History

Due to its winding alignment between Clonmel and Cahir, the road now known as the N24 caused considerable annoyance to one "X.Z.", an anonymous Englishman who toured Ireland in the summer of 1782. "X.Z.", who was travelling from Dublin to Cork, had not seen fit to comment on the state of Ireland's roads until he left Clonmel for Cahir: "From Clonmel we rode west 8 miles to Cahir and here we first noticed the difference between Munster and Leinster roads: the roads in Munster are not carried on right lines, but wind about considerably in different places for no reason that we could find out, except it be in some places for the sake of mounting a few steep hills, which would be avoided if the roads were carried in a straight line - They seem the paths formerly trod by their ancestors, and are in some places paved and gravelled, in others in a natural state - Travelling on these accounts is very slow in Munster, especially if we go out of turnpike roads."^[1]

Between Cahir and its junction with the N76 east of Clonmel, the N24 once formed an integral part of the T6 - the old trunk road that connected the cities of Cork and Dublin before the contemporary numbering system was established.

See also

• Roads in Ireland
• Motorways in Ireland
• National secondary road
• Regional road

References

1. ^ Quoted in David Broderick, The First Toll-Roads: Ireland's Turn-Pike Roads, 1729-1858 (Cork, 2002), p. 106

• Roads Act 1993 (Classification of National Roads) Order 2006 – Department of Transport