There was great excitement in Thurles yesterday as Minister for Public Expenditure and Infrastructure Mr Jack Chambers arrived to inspect some of the town’s important infrastructure projects.
Accompanying him were Deputies Mr Ryan O’Meara and Mr Michael Lowry, and Cllr Sean Ryan, naturally an occasion of such national significance required that essential piece of modern infrastructure without which no Irish public project can possibly proceed: The camera. Lots of cameras. Photographs here. Photographs there. Video at the junction. Video beside the road.
Possibly another photograph just in case the first photograph failed to adequately demonstrate the seriousness of looking into a field.
The Minister viewed the proposed Thurles Inner Relief Road. He viewed the proposed Turtulla Cross roundabout. The issues at the M8 junction at Two-Mile-Borris were also highlighted. All very worthwhile projects. And somewhere in the middle of this magnificent infrastructure expedition, one elderly local issue apparently went missing, vanished even. It was not a person. It was a project – THE THURLES BYPASS.
Yes, it was the legendary Thurles Outer Bypass. Older readers may remember it. Younger readers may have heard the stories about it from their great-great-great grandparents. Archaeologists believe even references to it may exist in ancient Department of Transport documents. There was even a selected route. There was a reserved corridor, and in 2026 it received a whole €50,000 to prepare a Phase 0 Project Outline document.
Yes, Phase Zero. After all these years, Thurles has achieved the infrastructure equivalent of reaching the starting line and discovering that somebody still has to fill out the form, allowing us to approach the starting line.
Still, €50,000 is not to be sniffed at, particularly when Dublin’s MetroLink now has a central estimated construction cost of approximately: €15,750 billion. So while Dublin prepares for 19 kilometres of mostly underground railway, 16 stations, trains every few minutes and tunnelling on a scale rarely seen in Ireland, since the Irish Civil War 1922 era, when 112 republican prisoners successfully crawled to freedom through a secretly dug tunnel to a connected sewer system, toescape from Newbridge Barracks, Co. Kildare.
Project Outline Document. Steady now. We don’t want to rush these things. At this rate, by the time MetroLink passengers are travelling underneath Dublin; Thurles may have advanced triumphantly to: Phase 0.5 – Preliminary Consideration of the Possibility of Considering Phase 1. I forecast, there may even be another photocall.
Of course, the Inner Relief Road and Turtulla Cross are important projects. Congestion and road safety are indeed serious issues and investment is badly needed. But the remarkable thing about the Thurles Bypass is its extraordinary ability to remain permanently present, while simultaneously being almost completely invisible.
It has a route. It has a corridor. It has appeared in plans. It has disappeared from plans. It has been discussed. It has been revived. It has been allocated money and yet somehow, whenever the cameras always arrive… POOF – the Thurles Bypass enters stealth mode.
Perhaps Cllr Sean Ryan should put a large sign on the reserved corridor, “Minister — Project This Way ➡️”; preferably with a photographer taken of him standing beside it.
Because judging by the speed at which infrastructure sometimes progresses, the most effective piece of road-building equipment available to Thurles, may not be a bulldozer at all. It may be a Canon EOS with a telephoto lens.
Finally, we can only hope that everyone travelled together yesterday in that one electric vehicle. After all, with €15.75 billion required for MetroLink, every small saving counts.
One car. Four politicians. Three road schemes. Several cameras and one Thurles Bypass apparently hiding behind a hedge whispering: “Any chance ye might take a photograph of me while ye’re here?”
At this stage the people of Thurles don’t necessarily need another photograph of somebody looking thoughtfully, with their backs at a road. They’d probably settle for the extraordinary novelty of eventually being able to drive on one.
Oh my God I forgot; then there’s the small matter of the funding that was already… er… funded. Veteran followers of the Thurles infrastructure cinematic universe may remember a previous episode. Back in October 2021, former retired TD Jackie Cahill announced that Thurles was “finally receiving the funding we need” for the Inner Relief Road.
Excellent. Funding secured. Champagne on ice. Start warming up the diggers. Except things subsequently became just a tiny bit confusing. Because by June 2023, Tipperary County Council’s own management report listed the next stage of the Inner Relief Road as: “SECURE FUNDING TO DELIVER THE INNER RELIEF ROAD PROJECT.”
Yes, we had apparently entered that fascinating branch of public finance, where funding can be secured before the funding that still needs to be secured has actually been secured. A remarkable rural Ireland innovation.
Schrödinger’s Road Funding. The money is simultaneously there and not there until somebody opens the Department of Transport envelope. Perhaps this explains why infrastructure takes so long. We’ve been using ordinary mathematics. Maybe Thurles road projects operate under quantum mechanics.
In 2021: Funding secured ✅.
In 2023: Next step: Secure funding ✅.
In 2026: Minister photographed looking at project ✅.
Presumably the next headline will be: “GOVERNMENT DELIGHTED TO CONFIRM FUNDING TO DETERMINE WHETHER PREVIOUSLY SECURED FUNDING REQUIRES FURTHER FUNDING BEFORE FUNDING CAN OFFICIALLY BE DESCRIBED AS FUNDED.”
There will naturally be a photograph. Possibly several; and somewhere nearby, leaning patiently against its reserved corridor, the Thurles Bypass will be watching the entire performance with the weary expression of a project that has seen governments come and go and knows better than to get excited.
The poor Bypass must be thinking: “Hold on lads… before ye announce that money, could somebody check whether I’ve already been funded as well?” Because at this stage, anything is possible. Perhaps the Thurles Bypass was actually completed in 1987 and nobody remembered to tell us. Maybe it’s invisible. Maybe you require a special pair of Department of Transport glasses to see it.
Or perhaps – and this is the really radical idea – one day we might dispense with the announcements, the rediscoveries, the re-announcements, the photographs of people pointing thoughtfully into the middle distance and the ceremonial securing of money that apparently requires subsequent securing……and simply build the bloody road.
Until then: Smile everyone. The camera is ready. The politicians are assembled. The funding is simultaneously secured and awaiting securing, and the Thurles Bypass remains exactly where generations of Thurles people have learned to expect it:- COMING SOON.
Meanwhile, on behalf of the people of Thurles, allow me to congratulate all the local Press Correspondent; Access Journalists; all the “Stenographers To Power”, who failed miserably to critically question our visiting politicians yesterday, on what was truly a slow news day.
You’d want to be absolutely desperate for likes as a local politician to be proudly standing in for photos of a minister on a fact-finding mission for projects that should have been done and dusted years ago. It reeks of total hunger for publicity. Cashel has three full entry and exit points on both sides of the motorway, and Thurles a bigger town and with a stadium that routinely hosts 47k crowds gets 1.5 entry and exits.