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

As the Deputy knows, the LIS has closed. It opened up in 2016 and since then I have put over €100 million into it. The budget for this year is €13 million and that is up for €12 million in 2023. There is a big long list of lanes in different parts of the country. In some counties, the list has gone down in numbers and in others it is getting bigger because some local authorities opened up the scheme to new applicants while other local authorities decided to try to get rid of the backlog before opening it up. It is hard to compare like for like with counties. However, in total, as of the end of December 2023, local authorities told us they had 3,400 roads and stated that the categorisation of backlog varied from county to county and represented a point-in-time estimation from 2023. There are a good few roads included there. Some 3,400 roads are listed. Any spare money I had last year, I transferred it over to try to reduce the LIS backlogs. I also always raise it at budget time that it is an area where money is spent quickly but it has a huge impact. The Deputy has asked me about changing the criteria. I said I would rather get rid of some of the long list before I did that or before I allowed more house owners as opposed to the way it is now where you have to have two land owners before qualifying now.