TOM Doyle cuts an incongruous figure with his shirt, tie and navy two piece suit teamed with mucky Wellingtons. He dons the boots daily to walk 200 yards across a swampy field, from the main road where he parks his car to the front door of his Co Kildare home.
Mr Doyle, his wife Elaine, and their five grown up children have been "running the gauntlet" across this field since their driveway was cut off six years ago to make way for the Kilcullen bypass, which opened in 1994.
Mr Doyle says the two family cars become "shoe lockers" in the winter months, holding a selection of work footwear and mucky boots.
The field, where they once grazed cattle and ponies, is rutted with tyre marks from previous efforts to drive closer to the house. Mrs Doyle says they have gone through about four cars over the past six years and buy only bangers now.
One car recently got stuck in the mud and they had to pay £30 for a taxi to Dublin.
The Doyles say the situation has turned them into prisoners in their six bedroom home, and deters them from inviting friends over.
They have also become bogged down in protracted legal actions over the by pass, which they say has robbed them of the sand and gravel business they used to operate from the land.
Their legal battles have consumed their lives and left them "financially devastated", facing bills of at least £145,000.
Mr Doyle, a former banker who is now self employed as a financial consultant, says his income - has been cut by two thirds. Mrs Doyle has become so engrossed in the case that she is studying to be a barrister and is representing the family in court actions.
The saga began in 1989, when Kildare County Council ordered the compulsory purchase of about six of the Doyle's 20 acres in Athgarvan to build the by pass.
This area included a sand and gravel pit which the Doyles had excavated from 1981 to 1986, when they were told by the council chat it would be required for the by pass.
The Doyles claimed £1.3 million in compensation for the land, which they say contained two million tonnes of gravel. The council valued the land at £125,000.
When the case went to arbitration the Doyles were awarded £106,000 - £85,000 for the land and £21,000 to construct a new driveway.
They appealed successfully to the High Court to have this award set aside. In a Supreme Court appeal by the council and the arbitrator, the award of £106,000 was upheld in October 1995.
The Doyles will be before the Supreme Court again in June for a judicial review hearing in which they are challenging the legal validity of the motorway. Their compensation case has been stayed pending this hearing.
The Doyles refer to the Kilcullen by pass as an "alleged motorway" because they say they discovered within the past month that no statutory instrument designating it as one has ever been made. They also claim that the land which the by pass intersects is still registered in their name.
So convinced are they of their case that they hired a JCB last week and started digging a new driveway broadly following the route of the original one. The land is theirs, they claim, so they still have planning permission for the driveway.
They intend to create a slipway down the steep embankment on to the by pass, which will join with the Dublin bound traffic lane.
"If this isn't a motorway, which we believe it isn't, we don't need any planning permission," said Mr Doyle.
"We basically feel that we reinstate our old driveway because it is our land. Our main concern is to get access to our house again. We're fed up with it and we're not going to put up with it any longer."
Mr Doyle notified Kildare County Council last week that he intends to excavate the motorway embankment to restore access to his house. He says he hopes this will force the council to take him to court to try to prove that the "alleged motorway" is legally valid.
The council says Mr Doyle is acting illegally in digging up the embankment. "If he continues to break the law ... we will take the necessary legal steps to ensure that he doesn't do so. That would be our duty," said the acting assistant county manager, Mr Harry Lyons.
Mr Lyons said the land is registered in the council's name and the motorway was "validly created." He declined to make any further comment on the Doyles' claims.
"The right place for their arguments to be made is before the courts," he said.
Mr Doyle said he and his wife will continue with the case. "All we are trying to do is claw back some of the life that we had and the financial strength that we had," he said. "We can't turn back now because we've gone so far down the road already."