Holloway now covers Ireland. As of today the map shows 1,928 unsurfaced public roads across 26 counties in the Republic, 1,131 km in all, each one with its own place on the map and most of the longer ones with their own page. It's in beta, and below I'll explain why, what's included and what isn't.
Ireland doesn't have green lanes, it has green roads
In England and Wales, green laning rests on a legal record: the Definitive Map, and the byways open to all traffic on it. Ireland has nothing like that. There are no BOATs, no Traffic Regulation Orders on byways, and no general right to ride off-road.
What Ireland does have is a huge network of local roads, every one of them numbered by the council (L-1234 and so on). Most are tarmac lanes. A small share were never surfaced: green roads, bog roads and old mountain tracks that are still public roads on the council's books. Those are what Holloway now maps.
The whole of Ireland on the Holloway map. Each cluster is a group of unsurfaced roads the council lists as public.
How we found them
The councils publish a national list of every local road, the Local Road Network, through the Road Management Office. That list says a road is public, but not what it's like. OpenStreetMap fills that gap: it has the line of the road and, for many of them, a note that the surface is gravel, dirt or grass.
So we matched the two. A track only counts when most of it runs along a road on the council's list. We dropped anything mapped as private, no access or a footpath, anything that's mostly a farm track running beside a tarmac road, and the main local roads unless OpenStreetMap says outright that they're unsurfaced.
We also left out 20 tracks whose names said they weren't ordinary roads, even though they line up with a council road: waymarked walking routes like the Grand Canal Way towpath and Saint Kevin's Way, a "Private Road", disused railway lines and a bog access track. A page telling you a canal towpath is open to motorcycles would be wrong, and it's exactly the kind of mistake that gets riders a bad name.
Check it on the day
This is the part I want every Irish rider to read. Under the Roads Act 1993 a public road is one with a public right of way that the council maintains, but the Act counts footpaths as roads too. So now and then a road on the council's list will be one that's only open on foot. Surfaces and access change as well: a gate goes up, a section washes out.
That's why every Irish road on Holloway carries the same caution: listed by the council as a public local road, mapped as unsurfaced, check it on the day before riding. If it looks like a footpath, a farmyard or someone's drive when you get there, turn round.
Tap any road for its card: the weather, a ground conditions estimate from recent rain, Street View and the caution.
A page for every road worth one
Alongside the map there are now 334 Irish road pages. Each shows the road's length, where it runs, the roads around it and a "Check its status now" button that searches for any current closure on that road. The button asks a question that makes sense in Ireland, whether it's a public road open to motorcycles and whether anything closes it, rather than the TRO question we use for English byways.
Local Road L-51934 near Dunlewy, Donegal: 4.5 km, unsurfaced, with a map and a one-tap status check.
Most of them go by their council number, because that's the name the council uses and the best thing to quote if you ever ask about one. Where OpenStreetMap has a local name, like Bóthar an Phortaigh in Donegal, the page uses that instead. Every county also has a full list, starting with every unsurfaced public road in County Donegal, and the Holloway lanes index now has an Ireland section.
County guides
23 counties have their own guide, covering how the roads were found, the legal position and the roads to start with. Dublin, Longford and Offaly don't have one yet, with fewer than ten roads each.
The County Donegal guide. Donegal has the most by a distance: 391 roads and 320 km.
Donegal leads with 320 km, then Cork, Mayo, Clare, Tipperary and Roscommon. If you're planning a trip, the green roads guide for County Donegal is the place to start, and the trail riding guides list the rest.
Why it's in beta
Two reasons. The first is the check-on-the-day point above: a council list plus a surface tag is good evidence, but it isn't a legal record of vehicle rights the way a BOAT is. The second is that nobody on the Holloway side has ridden these roads yet, so none of them are graded. Every road shows as moderate and not yet graded until a rider tells us otherwise.
This is where Irish riders come in. If you know a road on the map that shouldn't be there, a road that's missing, or what one is actually like to ride, use the suggest buttons on its card in the app. Corrections from people who ride these roads are the fastest way to get Ireland out of beta.
Northern Ireland isn't covered. Its access law is separate and it needs its own work.
Try it
Open the Holloway map, pan across to Ireland and tap any purple road. The map, the road pages and the status check are free with a quick email sign-in. Route planning, GPX downloads and navigation are part of Premium, and they work on the Irish roads the same as everywhere else.
Road list from the councils' Local Road Network (Road Management Office, CC BY 4.0). Lines and surfaces © OpenStreetMap contributors. Reference only: check each road on the day before riding.