Ireland: Investigations in Advance of Motorway Construction

Introduction

In the late 1990s, the Republic of Ireland decided to upgrade, develop, and expand its motorway network. Unlike other countries in Western Europe, Ireland’s motorway network had been largely undeveloped, with limited works in the 1980s and 1990s. Under Irish legislation and associated government policy, archaeological sites are afforded protection and there is a duty on developers to minimize their impact on archaeological sites through either avoidance, preservation in situ, or, as a last resort, preservation by record (i.e., by scientific archaeological excavation).

Key Issues/Current Debates/Future Directions/Examples

The original strategy for dealing with archaeological sites on the early motorway projects was that known sites identified during the environmental impact assessment (EIA) would be excavated prior to construction while the discovery of previously undocumented sites would be left to monitoring during the main construction works, the subsequent excavations...