Sarah O'Reilly (Aontú)

I thank the Minister very much for attending today. I read his statement, and I would like to give the Minister a little bit of feedback on some of the schemes, although I know he has not asked for it. The rural regeneration development fund, RRDF, is an excellent scheme and excellent work is going on throughout the country. The level and quality of the projects that are going on are very impressive.

LEADER is notoriously difficult, especially for voluntary groups, many of which are trying to apply. They nearly need professional help with the processes through the application. It is not fair to have such an arduous application for them. The town and village renewal scheme is good but I have noticed lately that is going towards painting schemes and the painting of facades of streetscapes, which is really just a sticking plaster over actual dereliction in towns. While it may end up nice for six to 12 months, paint starts to crumble. There needs to be something more substantive, maybe by derisking buildings in town centres that are a huge problem or an eyesore or in dereliction. The aim of that could be something more substantive.

The Minister covered the CLÁR programme. CLÁR funding is excellent and welcomed, especially in rural areas and areas of depopulation, but higher populated areas like Cavan town have really nothing to which they can apply. The RAPID scheme that used to be in existence years ago was very valued by local authorities. I was hoping the Minister might take a look at that.

The next issue I want to speak about is the local improvement scheme, LIS, which falls under the Minister's remit. I missed the beginning of the Minister's speech and I do not know if he mentioned it, but there seems to be a huge variance. I come from a county that has very poor soil, and our roads suffer greatly. The LIS is really a lifesaver. We have a very intensive agricultural farming industry going on down boreens. There was an allocation of €519,000 this year. At the minute, however, Cavan County Council is doing applications from 2017. In the Minister's own native County Mayo, it is up as far as 2024. We have 280 applications for assessments at the minute in Cavan. That is huge. It would take €12 million to clear the backlog. We as a committee could get the information from other councils to see where they lie on that scheme and how many applications there are, just so we can compare and see if anything more can be done for counties that are really struggling with road surfacing and roads.

The last issue is enterprise lands. The Minister might think this would fall under the Department of enterprise, but his predecessor did previously approve an RRDF scheme that allowed the council to build a road and put in services. In my town, we have no enterprise park lands developed. It is a barrier to organisations and companies - local and indigenous companies - that want to expand. It happened in Cootehill where they put a road in and put services in and allowed local enterprises to buy sites. It derisks and takes out the bureaucracy for companies that really want it. We have lost in Cavan many businesses to Meath, which is a more wealthy local authority and has done this. The Minister may have some comments on that.