The £45 million Arklow by-pass, part of the N11 route in Co Wicklow, has been opened nine months ahead of schedule.
The opening of the 11.5 kilometres by-pass, which includes 13 bridges - one of them a 278 metre crossing of the Avoca river - is expected to bring to an end one the State's worst bottlenecks.
On summer bank holiday weekends at Arklow, tail-backs can stretch five miles on either side of the town. On such days the "through-time" for holidaymakers can be one and a half hours, the chairman of Wicklow County Council, Mr Liam Kavanagh, said yesterday.
The opening of the by-pass is also expected to bring north Wexford within an hour's drive of south Co Dublin, opening up possibilities for commuters. In anticipation of the new by-pass the IDA has agreed to open a new 60-acre business park outside the town.
Having travelled the route in a vintage car yesterday, the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, said it was "an important element in the all-Ireland transport network".
He added that it advanced the North-South Strategic Corridor linking Larne and Belfast in Northern Ireland with Dublin and onwards to Rosslare and Cork in the Republic. The by-pass is officially part of Euro Route 1, between Rosslare and Larne, and was funded with 85 per cent grants from the European Cohesion Fund. The main contractors were Ascon, with consultants Ove Arup, and the design work was done in-house by Wicklow County Council.
The Minister said Arklow had been recognised as "one of the worst bottlenecks on the national road network" and the by-pass would bring tremendous improvements to the environment and quality of life in the town.
Adding that it was clear the State had been outgrowing its infrastructure, Mr Dempsey said £336 million "will be available for the improvement and maintenance of the national road network as against £288 million in 1988".
The investment, he said, would be the highest in the history of the State.
Mr Dempsey also said 1999 would be a record year for funding of "non-national" roads, with more than £242 million available from central funds.
The Minister revealed that following an accident on the N11 last year in which a school bus was struck by a lorry and six people died, the National Roads Authority had commissioned a safety check on the N11 between Rathnew and the northern end of the new by-pass. The Minister said he expected the results of this shortly.
Construction work on the Arklow by-pass started in October 1996 and investigation of a ring fort at Johnstown South townland led to discoveries of artefacts dating back to before the ring fort. An archaeologist, Ms Valerie Keeley, was employed and over 5,000 separate finds catalogued.
Seventeen other sites of archaeological interest were discovered along the route, revealing Bronze Age pottery and flint artefacts.
An artistic feature in the form of two ceramic sand castles and a tapering wall, designed by local artists Kenneth Meehan and Jeanette Doyle will be located near the Arklow slip road on the northern interchange to the bypass. It represents Arklow Castle, a city gate and Arklow as a tourist destination.
Some 175,000 deciduous woodland trees have been planted along the route of the by-pass. These include birch, alder, larch, hazel and field maple.
The two interchanges have been extensively planted with dogwood, violet willow and mountain ash.
The Wicklow county manager availed of the occasion to say construction of the stretch of dual carriageway linking Kilmacanogue to Glen of the Downs was to start later this year at a cost of £20 million.
A plan for the £50 million Newtownmountkennedy to Ballynabarney Road is also being finalised.
