Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I take the Deputy's point. This has been raised with me, and both the Deputy and the Cathaoirleach have said to me, as have others, that we badly need wastewater treatment plants in the villages. I will take a look to see what we can do. The maximum grant under CLÁR is €50,000. We can look at it and see if there is any way we could use that money to leverage more money from the Department of housing, which is where it will have to come from, and to see if we can do some small schemes. There is a good few people who would like to be able to live in the villages if they had a serviced site there. That is it.

Deputy Ó Cuív also mentioned the railway line from Athenry to Claremorris. I absolutely agree that we should encourage joint applications from local authorities for strategic infrastructure. Deputy Ó Cuív would be very familiar with the Ulster Canal. That is a good example. It is a big infrastructure project across three counties, namely, Monaghan, Fermanagh and Cavan. In fairness to the Deputy, he saw the value of it and then was able to get it moved on. They are working on that and it will make a difference not just to the town but to the whole region. I take his point about the railway line from Athenry to Claremorris. We can look at how we can support that with a feasibility study or something, but there are a lot of applications coming in. I will go on now about the underspend in the RRDF, and it is not for the want of reminding local authorities that they need to spend it. What we have spent to date on the RRDF is €140.5 million, with the spend this year likely to be around €51 million. There is over €260 million in approvals outstanding at the minute. There are a few counties - I will be honest with the committee - that sent in the most ambitious, beautiful plans and they were allocated the funding because their applications stood up but they have not spent a lot of money on the ground. When I am doing the next round, if they have not spent it, I will not give them any more because I am not into this carry-on whereby councils clock up money. They need to spend it. It does not need to sit anywhere. I do not want to be holding on to it. I want it spent. That is what we want to see - impact on the ground - so when they get their applications in, they should not sit on them, they should move on them.

There are other reasons relating to the RRDF, including supply of labour, getting contractors, complex projects, maybe heritage projects that run into problems or difficulties they were not expecting. You do not get money now unless you have planning. That is it. You can get the category 2 funding to help you progress to category 1. The railway line could possibly come under category 2 funding. You can get up to €500,000 under that, and that could get you to put the design in place, put the plans together, employ the consultants, do the ground work and then move to the next one. I have just thought of that. That might be where we need to look in that regard.

There are a lot of demands on local authorities. There is no doubt about it. There is the housing Department and all the other Departments putting pressure on them to spend the money on different projects. We have a very good relationship with them and work closely with them. The staff in my Department continually talk to local authorities, and if there are any problems, we try to iron them out quickly to get progress, but they have to prioritise delivery. My colleague, the Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is looking for them to deliver the houses and I am looking for them to deliver the town centre projects and the renewal of the town centres and so on. Having said that, though, if you do not spend it, you are not getting any more.

We have approved, in total, 215 projects under RRDF to a total value of €412 million. The spend to date is €140 million. I wish it were more because when you go out and see the finished projects, they are fantastic. There is no doubt about it. They make a real change to communities and, in particular, town centres.

I have said we are the smallest Department with the biggest impact. The value of a small grant was never lost on me. I will tell the committee a story I think I might have told before. I had to ring somebody one time about a small grant. I think it was €8,000 or €9,000. It could have been €10,000. It was not a big grant. They were very pleased. I cannot even remember what it was for. They said to me, "I would be a long time standing at traffic lights in Monaghan before I would get €10,000." That is the value to communities, and it is absolutely true. We should never forget that these small differences can make a big impact on our communities the length and breadth of the country.

As regards the LIS, I do not know if Deputy Ó Cuív heard me, but I lived on a long lane when I was growing up. It was a mile long and full of potholes. I know the benefit of an LIS project. The Deputy is absolutely right that there are a lot of LIS projects and people are using them now for walkways because they are safe. There is an element of active travel, and some of them may go past a lake or past various amenities and they are lovely places to walk. I take the Deputy's point about the two herd numbers. Sometimes, in some areas, it is hard to meet those criteria, but I will be honest with him. I was trying to clear some of the backlog before I started to change the criteria because if I do the latter, I will just end up with a longer list. Sometimes people despair and wonder will they ever get their lane done. If I had more money for LIS projects, I would have no problem expanding the scheme further.

Deputy Ó Cuív asked me about LEADER money. I can tell him now that LEADER does not reduce the overall funding. It is just a matter of the timing of the bills for the projects. A new LEADER programme will come in next year. We are going through that process at the minute to select the local action groups to deliver the 2023-27 programme. As regards the local development strategies which were submitted by the applicants, lags are currently being assessed. To date, lags in 12 subregional areas have been notified. They have been approved by the independent selection committee established to adjudicate on the strategy submitted by the applicant groups. The other ones are being considered by the committee.

I think I have covered nearly everything in terms of the questions I was asked, except for the last one, which relates to the CSO census. All rural areas are experiencing rises in population. The Our Rural Future policy recognises the diversity of rural areas. It also allows me to hold all the other Departments' toes to the fire and toast them. Some of them are delivering, and I say to them that they need to deliver. I know healthcare on islands is challenging, as is the provision of teachers in schools, but when you look at the overall improvement in rural Ireland, there are more people working there and the population is increasing. I know there are challenges, and there will always be challenges and we try to deal with them, but when I go out to rural communities I think there is a positivity out there. There is a new sense of hope in rural Ireland that we did not have a number of years ago, and we need to build on that and be positive. I love living in rural Ireland. I would not dream of living anywhere else and I would like other people to enjoy the same pleasures that the Deputy and I and others have by living in the country.