Have any other riders in Ireland noticed the poor quality of road surfacing especially on secondary roads lately; what are we paying road taxes for? 

Tim

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Planned National Roads Network for 2015

The island of Ireland, comprising Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, has an extensive network of tens of thousands of kilometres of public roads, usually surfaced. These roads have been developed and modernised over centuries, from trackways suitable only for walkers and horses, to surfaced roads including modern motorways. Northern Ireland has had motorways since 1962, and has a well developed network of primary, secondary and local routes. Historically, the road network in the Republic of Ireland was less well developed and maintained. However, with the advent of the Celtic Tiger and significant European Union funding, most national roads in the Republic continue to be upgraded. In the 1990s the Republic went from having only a few short sections of motorway to constructing motorways, dual-carriageways and other improvements on most major routes as part of a National Development Plan. Road construction in Northern Ireland has proceeded at a slower pace in recent years, although a number of important bypasses and upgrades to dual carriageway have recently been completed or are about to begin.

The major differences between roads in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are in road quality and route classification, signposts and speed limits.

Roads in Northern Ireland are classified as either motorways (shown by the letter M followed by a route number, eg. M1), A-roads (shown by the letter A followed by a route number, eg. A6), B-roads (shown by the letter B followed by a route number, eg. B135) and other roads. There are two types of A-roads: primary and non-primary. Roads in the Republic are classified as either motorways (shown by the letter M followed by a route number, eg. M7), National roads (shown by the letter N followed by a route number, eg. N25), Regional roads (shown by the letter R followed by a route number, eg. R611) and Local roads (shown by the letter L followed by a route number, eg. L4202). There are two types of National roads: National Primary routes and National Secondary routes.

Distance signposts in Northern Ireland show distances in miles, while all signposts placed in the Republic since 2005 use kilometres. The Republic's road signs are bilingual, using both of the state's official languages, Irish and English. The signs in Irish Gaelic are written in lower case italic script, which are smaller than the English language script and are therefore more difficult to read than the English version , which are in non-italic large capital letters. Signs in Northern Ireland are in English only. Warning signs in the Republic have a yellow background and are diamond-shaped, those in Northern Ireland are triangle-shaped and have a white background with a red border.

Currently speed limits in Northern Ireland are specified in miles per hour. Those in the Republic use kilometres per hour (km/h), a change introduced on 20 January 2005. This involved the provision of 58,000 new metric speed limit signs, replacing and supplementing 35,000 imperial signs.