Whilst this is a fantastic stretch of road, it has a major Achilles heal. Two grade separated junctions provide access to the bypassed town of Claremorris and village of Knock, however all other minor roads along the route front directly onto the N17 mainline. This stretch of road is high speed and quite busy, and an accident involving one of these minor roads (old N17 at the southern terminus of the scheme) took the lives of 3 people last year
At the inquest, the coroner described accessing the N17 via these roads as "almost like Russian roulette". In my opinion, some of these roads should be closed up as they are used as ray runs for accessing the towns, which are accessible via the official junctions, and right turns across busy lanes are quite dangerous.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2018/0918/994564-inquest-mayo-crash/