This is a togher, a type of wooden trackway constructed through Irish wetlands, and the example at Derrynaskea is classed as a class 3 togher, meaning it represents one of the more modest forms of these structures, likely a local route rather than a major arterial crossing.

Togher construction was a practical response to the Irish landscape, where bogs and marshes made movement between settlements difficult or impossible without some form of engineered surface underfoot. Builders would lay split or rounded timbers, brushwood, or planks across the soft ground, sometimes pegging them in place, creating a walkable or passable track that could survive for millennia preserved beneath the anaerobic conditions of the peat. The Derrynaskea togher was noted during a field survey in 1988, with the record attributed to archaeologist B. Raftery, one of Ireland's foremost authorities on prehistoric trackways and bog roads. The survey was conducted as part of broader wetland archaeological work undertaken through University College Dublin, at a time when increasing awareness of bog drainage and development prompted urgent efforts to catalogue what remained hidden in Irish peatlands before it was lost.