Ireland Transportation Profile 2012

The state has three main international airports (Dublin, Shannon, Cork) that serve a wide variety of European and intercontinental routes with scheduled and chartered flights. The national airline is Aer Lingus, although low cost airline Ryanair is the largest airline. The route between London and Dublin is the busiest international air route in Europe, with 4.5 million people flying between the two cities in 2006.

Railway services are provided by Iarnród Éireann. Dublin is the centre of the network, with two main stations (Heuston and Connolly) linking to the main towns and cities. The Enterprise service, run jointly with Northern Ireland Railways, connects Dublin with Belfast. Dublin has a steadily improving public transport network of varying quality including the DART, Luas, Bus service and an expanding rail network.
This section of the M7/M8 motorways opened in May 2010, completing the M8 and extending the M7.

The road network is focused on Dublin, and motorways are currently being extended to other major cities as part of the Transport 21 programme, which aims to have a world-class motorway network in place by the end of 2010.

By then most of Ireland's main cities (Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Belfast) will be connected to Dublin with motorways or with near-motorway standard roads. Dublin has been the focus of some other major projects, such as the East-Link and West-Link toll-bridges, as well as the Dublin Port Tunnel. Major by-pass projects are underway at other cities and towns; most of these are under construction as of 2009. The Jack Lynch Tunnel under the River Lee in Cork was a major project outside Dublin, and a fourth crossing at Limerick under the River Shannon (known as the Limerick Tunnel) commenced construction in 2006. The motorways and national routes (national primary roads and national secondary roads) are managed by the National Roads Authority. The rest of the roads (regional roads and local roads) are managed by the local authorities in each of their areas.

Ireland still has a canal network, however this is mainly used for leisure boating rather than freight.

Regular ferry services operate between Ireland and Britain, the Isle of Man and France.