Road Projects
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-12
============================================================

Joe O'Reilly (FG), Labour Panel

I welcome my good friend, the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, to the House. All his friends in County Cavan are hoping that he will have good news for us today. A bombshell was dropped at Cavan County Council last Monday when Virginia councillor, Mr. T.P. O'Reilly looked for an update on the progress of the Virginia bypass. The Virginia bypass is currently at stage 3 and it had been proposed to go to stage 4 in the spring of 2026, following a delay of 18 months. At the meeting last Monday it was announced that stage 4 will not happen until the fourth quarter of 2027. Effectively, this means a two-year delay on top of an 18-month delay, on top of a 50-year discussion around the need for this bypass.
Naturally, Councillor O'Reilly was incensed by this. Many of his colleagues, from his own party and all others, subsequently spoke on the matter and the general consensus was that they were angry and disappointed. This is a shocking situation. To use northern terminology, the wee roads around Virginia, the smaller roads, are now being destroyed and cut to ribbons by cars diverting to avoid the backlog on the N3 Virginia road. They are going on the small roads and cutting them to ribbons. That is a huge problem in itself. It is also a danger for children on these roads. The roads are residential and were not intended for this kind of traffic. There is a health and safety issue there.
There are inordinate delays for commuters on the N3 going into Virginia. After a day's work in Dublin, someone could sit on the N3 for up to 45 minutes waiting to get through Virginia. They may have had the same experience in the morning. I often get text messages from people who are angry at having to sit there. One particular person, a good friend of mine who constantly texts me, sent a message saying they had been sitting there for an hour waiting to get through Virginia when they should have been at home with their family. It is strangling the town commercially. It is affecting the whole life of the town. It is a beautiful town in an idyllic setting. It has potential for more residential development and all of that. It is just a horror that this is the case. I know the Minister of State will say there was a capital announcement at Christmas on the matter, but what does that mean to someone sitting outside Virginia at the moment, trying to get to Dublin? It is already costing a lot. People are working an eight-hour day in Dublin, spending a couple of hours commuting to work and another couple of hours home. It is horrendous.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:37+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-12