All the small things eventually add up

Cavanman's Diary

September, 1999. I had just started in my Junior Cert year in St Pat’s - I’m 42 next week – and was listening to Blink 182, an American pop-punk band a lot of kids my age were into.

That month, they released what would turn out to be their biggest hit, All The Small Things. You probably know it; it’s an ear-worm with a billion plays on Spotify. It’s a phrase you will recognise if you live in rural Ireland, too, where the towns and villages are slowly diminishing before our eyes, one little cut at a time.

The town of Virginia, where I live, lost its ATM last week. A small thing, that, of course – a minor inconvenience, barely worth mentioning; a couple of the shops have them in-store anyway. And maybe the intention is to replace the one they boarded up, too.

Of course, the shops can’t trade 24-7 but are we really going to get all worked up over the loss of a bank machine?

Funnily, last year, legislation was passed – the ‘Access to Cash Act’ – which seemed to guard against this sort of thing. The Tánaiste, Simon Harris, thought as much anyway, when he said that the legislation “will ensure that cash is accessible in communities right across the country”.

But anyway, as we said, it’s only a small thing. Simon is all for minding the older people and anyone else who uses cash, sure didn’t he say it? Surprises, to paraphrase the Blink boys’ track from 27 years ago, let us know he cares…

Now that I think of it, wasn’t it a small thing when Virginia, like so many Irish towns, saw its bank closing down, too. But then, what would you need a bank for? There are a few in Cavan, there’s one in Kells, Bailieborough has one…

I suppose, it was a small thing, too, when the town lost its hotel a couple of years ago but Virginia wasn’t alone there and there are plenty of other hospitality places around anyway.

It was, safe to say, only a small thing when, in recent weeks, it was announced that the long-awaited Virginia by-pass faces further delays, too. Some people shrugged indifferently; some were annoyed, more were frustrated.

I laughed at the time when someone said to me, irritated, that we’d be waiting another 10 years to see this bypass. I sensed by their tone, and their emphasis on the number, that they felt they were exaggerating, over-egging the point out of annoyance. Were they, though? Will we be driving on that road in 2036? Would you bet on it?

Of course, the politicians aren’t happy about it. Oh no. They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more, or certainly not much more. Okay, maybe a wee bit more but that’s it.

“Why bother giving a date at all?” one raged, calling it “bananas”. He added, according to a report in this paper by Gemma Good, “that the councillors sat in the chamber in 2024 and heard the project would progress to planning at the end of last year, and were later told it would be Spring 2026”.

Anyone who has followed the story closely would attest that it goes back a lot longer than that.

The first mention of this project in the archives of this newspaper was in that month I mentioned, September of ‘99, two weeks before the song came out.

On that occasion, it was reported – and, with the benefit of hindsight, you’d have to laugh - that “the route identification stage” was “about to commence”.

To put it in context, two days after that paper hit the streets, carrying this great news on its front page, Serena Williams, the then-17-year-old tennis prodigy from LA, won her first Grand Slam title.

In the intervening years, Williams won 22 more of tennis’s majors. Her powers then waned; in 2022, she retired. A sporting empire rose and fell and still, no sod has been turned on this much-needed road. In fact, it will be the guts of two years more, “most likely” (but not definitely), before planning is even submitted.

There were reports of minor football finals in the same issue of that paper, Cavan Gaels beating Crosserlough, Drumlane seeing off Killygarry, young footballers, on the cusp of adulthood. I scanned the names; I know most of those lads and they are all long retired from competitive football. A generation gone, and still, we wait for this small thing.

More. In February 2000, the then-County Manager commented that the Virginia by-pass had “moved forward rapidly in the queue”. He believed, he said, that it would be under construction within the next two years. Rapidly, now! This thing was hurtling forward.

In December of that year, the plans for the bypass were put on display in Sharkey’s Hotel in Virginia, on a Thursday, noon to 9pm. It was important, you see, that everyone got a chance to check them out because the local people needed to be kept up to speed on this development which was, don’t worry, coming soon, not much longer now…

The same month, an unnamed Virginia businessman was quoted expressing concern about the economic loss the town might incur due to a fall-off in passing trade when the by-pass was built.

“There are only 1,100 people in Virginia and you can’t survive on that,” he said, not unreasonably.

Imagine what he would have thought if he’d been told that it would be 27 years before planning was (“likely”) submitted. How could the town survive that one? According to the 2022 Census, for the record, that 1,100 number has now trebled.

Now it’s December, 2001 and here comes further good news on the bush wire. A Council official states that they are very much aware of the problems along the N3, particularly from Maghera into Virginia. The solution, he says, “is the Virginia by-pass”. Hopefully, he adds, it would be progressing “very soon”.

How soon, though, is very soon? It brings to mind the Chinese premier who, asked in the 1970s about the impact of the French Revolution, reckoned it was too soon to say.

Anyway, back to Virginia, back to 2026. Now, I’m here 13 years but I’m only a blow-in to the town and blow-ins have to be careful what they say. Virginia, for the record, is a wonderful place to live and the people are among the friendliest I have met – but it’s hard to make the case that a town stripped of services and choked by traffic is on the up at present.

A key focus of the Virginia by-pass project, according to Cavan County Council’s website, is to “minimise the impact to the natural and built environment”. There is no mention of the impact on the people of the town of thousands of vehicles streaming through each day – and the knock-on effect, also covered by this newspaper of late, of by-roads which aren’t designed to take heavy traffic also getting clogged.

Astoundingly, a roundabout which was installed in the centre of town a few years back has actually exacerbated the problem. I have a habit of turning on the Sat Nav in the car, even on straightforward journeys. Often, coming into Virginia from the Cavan side, it will inform me that it would be quicker to veer off the N3, a national route, cut cross-country on a narrow by-road and enter the town via the R194 (Ballyjamesduff road). It’s laughable, really - a device built on algorithms has more faith in a boreen than in the initial tweaks of a road project first promised when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

So now, the traffic, which used to just stack up on the Dublin side, builds on both. One morning, driving to work, I was a mile down the road towards Cavan when I realised I had forgotten something. It took me 15 minutes to get back into Virginia, 15 minutes to travel a mile on a national route.

Again, a wee problem, as we say, a small thing, just as the closure of a bank was, just as the loss of a hotel was, just as the bricking up of an ATM last week was, just as the hours wasted in traffic are.

But when all these small things add up, they tell a big story, the ending of which is not pretty.