After many vicissitudes, the Lee tunnel will be opened by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, today.
The £105 million project - the largest undertaken by any local authority in the State - is the final element of the Cork Land Use and Transportation Study, begun in the late 1970s to prepare Cork infrastructure for the new millennium.
The length of the tunnel is 122 metres and its external width is 24.5 metres. In effect, it is not a tunnel at all, because it does not bore under the river bed of the Lee. Instead, using the most advanced technology available, the UK construction company, Tarmac Walls, together with several Irish sub-contractors, prefabricated concrete troughs on the Mahon side of the Lee, which were then floated out on to the river, sunk and joined together.
Some 785,000 tonnes of silt and alluvium were excavated and disposed of at sea under licence. A further 300,000 tonnes of underlying sands and gravels were removed from the river bed and used for reclamation.
The tunnel is designed to bring almost all heavy traffic away from the city centre and divert it towards the network of ring roads now in place. This should allow for greater pedestrianisation and more landscaping. In addition, Cork Corporation is planning to upgrade the water quality in the Lee through a major drainage scheme, and to enhance amenity areas near the river bank at the Leefields and the Mardyke.
As the tunnel project neared completion, the corporation announced an international art competition to enhance its approaches. Submissions were received from many countries, but the Cork artist, Vivienne Roche, has been awarded the commission - worth £150,000 - to produce a work of merit at the tunnel, which has been named after the former Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch.