Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, on his appointment and I wish him well. He was one of our colleagues up to a few days ago. Now he is a Minister of State on the other side of the House. We look forward to working with him. I thank the Minister, Deputy Ring, for the great work he has been doing in the past 12 months in what is a very important Department.

A previous speaker indicated that there has been an underspend in respect of LIS. Kerry County Council has spent the money the Minister gave it earlier this year, at the end of last year and early last year. I want the Minister to recognise that because the council has done the work and its second application has been with the Department for over a month. That application includes a request for funding for emergency hardship schemes. Such funding comes out of moneys for LIS. The council was not able to fund that in the first round of LIS. The emergency services cannot get up and down the roads to the homes of people with disabilities. This is one aspect of the application made to the Department. I ask the Minister to the council an opportunity to do the work while the weather is reasonably good. There are over 800 applications for LIS with Kerry County Council. I assure the Minister we will spend the money if he sends it to the council because we have so many roads in a deplorable condition. When I was agitating for the reintroduction of the scheme, I said these people are every bit as entitled to a good road to their doors as the people in Dublin 4.

The Minister understands that. I appeal to him because it is important and they deserve recognition.

The repair-and-lease scheme was a disaster and I had that matter out with the Minister of State, Deputy English, on different occasions. The local authorities could only offer the scheme where there was pressure for social housing. The Minister of State tried to deny that and rebuff me but that was the fact of it. If people applied for the scheme in places such as Kilgarvan, Gneeveguilla or Rathmore, there was no hope in the world for them because there was no pressure in these areas. However, many houses there were falling asunder and into dereliction and yet we did not benefit from the scheme at all. I do not know if there was enough funding or whatever.

We are discussing the rural regeneration scheme and we are all listening very attentively. We have proud towns in my county such as, for example, Cahersiveen, where businesses closed down in the past two weeks. We can spend money to do up the houses in the town or to provide housing but jobs are what will sustain people in their homes. There are schools in the Cahersiveen area this year that have only two youngsters going into the junior infants class. That highlights the seriousness of the situation. In Currow, the post office, a shop and one of the pubs have closed. There is just a shop and a pub left and we do not know if they will remain open. There are so many different places. In Rathmore, Cadbury Ireland gives employment but there are many houses vacant and shops closed along the street. That is the road leading into our county from the manor side to the first town in Kerry.

There are so many places that need jobs to sustain them. I know funding can be provided for houses - and the Minister is doing his best to do that and to regenerate these places - but we need to consider how we are going to create employment. I appeal to the Minister to do that because if we are going to regenerate rural Ireland and keep it afloat, what we need are jobs. I refer to Cahersiveen in particular, which is so far from anywhere else. We need to get jobs down there.

Reference was made to walkways and to farmers. The people of the Iveragh Peninsula are waiting for the greenway from Glenbeigh to Cahersiveen to be put in place. I am of the view that the local authority went down the wrong road. I do not know from where it got its advice. Three and a half years ago it went down the route of making compulsory purchase orders, CPOs. However, the greenway has still not materialised. A number of farmers needed to be dealt with, but not that many. Now that the CPO process is in train, however, more people have their dander up because of the idea that the greenway will be the created by means of using CPOs. I ask the Minister if he could intervene and ensure that this greenway gets going via communication and agreement rather than through the use of CPOs. It is not too late to pull back from the CPO approach and to talk to the landowners involved. After all, they had to pay for the land going back generations and they had to fight hard to hold it. They have a right to be spoken to and that would be the fastest way to achieve this important greenway between Glenbeigh and Cahersiveen. The people of Cahersiveen really need it and the boost it will provide.