N4 upgrade design team meet public

As the plans for the N4 upgrade between Mullingar and Dromod start to progress beyond the design stage stakeholders, landowners, and members of the public were invited to a series of in-person public information events last week.

The first public forum to provide an update on the N4 upgrade project took place in Mullingar, and organisers followed up in Edgeworthstown and Longford with presentations of the current design development.

Billed as an opportunity to engage with the N4 Project Team, the information events were facilitated by Westmeath County Council, working in partnership with Longford County Council and supported by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII).

Details of the proposed changes to the 50 kilometres of N4 national primary route between the Mullingar Bypass and the Dromod-Roosky Bypass were on display. The project includes plans to bypass a number of towns and villages along the route, including Ballinalack, Rathowen, Edgeworthstown, Longford Town and Newtownforbes.

At the Mullingar Park Hotel event, residents and stakeholders had an opportunity to learn more about the project and contribute their views.

“We’ve done three rounds of non-statutory public consultation. The last one was summer of 2024,” John Holmes, project manager with consultants ROD/AECOM, said of the progress of the plans. “That was when we presented the emergent preferred corridor. It was still a corridor at that stage. Since then, we’ve progressed the scheme into what’s called Phase 3 of the TII project management guidelines.”

The upgrade is expected to deliver a range of benefits, including improved road safety, enhanced connectivity, reduced journey times and support for sustainable transport. It’s also viewed as a key piece of infrastructure for driving regional economic growth and improving quality of life for communities along the route.

The section to be worked on accounts for around 25% of the entire N4/M4 corridor and is the largest unimproved section of this route.

“We’ve been working on the design, the various environmental surveys, getting all our baseline data. We’re now at the stage of presenting a design update.

“This is what we call a design update number one, basically, to show the public as to what is happening,” Mr Holmes said at the public information event in Mullingar.

The project has a long and sometimes frustrating history. A preferred route corridor and route selection report were originally published in 2010, but progress was halted due to funding constraints.

Concerns about the future of the scheme resurfaced in 2023 when it was omitted from the government’s Capital Plan. The government subsequently allocated €1 million to allow the project to advance to the route selection stage.

Data indicates that the road services upwards of 23,500 vehicles per day and features more than 500 junctions and direct accesses. The section of the N4 to be upgraded is blighted by high collision statistics - more than 215 personal injury collisions were reported between 2008 and 2024. Of those, 20 resulted in fatalities and 41 resulted in serious injuries.

Mr Holmes said the public engagement has been positive so far: “We’ve written to all the landowners along the scheme and we’ve been endeavouring to engage with all of them. To date it’s been actually positive. We thank all the landowners for their engagement and giving us access up and down the scheme for various surveys for the last year.”

Shane Gill, senior executive engineer with Westmeath County Council, said much of the new route will be away from the existing road: “It’s online up to Portnashangan and then we’re offline at various stages. We’re parallel to the existing N4 for parts,” he says pointing to the map, “for example, here at Bunbrosna, we’re south of the existing N4. In terms of Westmeath, I’d say we’re really largely offline.”

A scheme of 50 kilometres presents a lot of engineering challenges and Mr Gill said: “It’s a vast scheme that we’re trying to produce. There’s varying challenges, no two landowners are in similar circumstances across the scheme.”

“Ultimately we’re hoping to get to a planning application lodged by the end of 2027,” Mr Holmes said. “A project at this scale then goes into An Coimisiún Pleanála and hopefully it will get a successful outcome to that planning application and move forward finally with construction.”

Anyone who missed the information event but would like more details on the current design can contact the National Roads Office of Westmeath County Council, at Culleen Beg, Mullingar.