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

I thank Deputy Canney for raising this.

The local improvement scheme, LIS, supports the improvement of rural roads and laneways that are not normally maintained by local authorities.

As part of Our Rural Future, the Government is committed to ensuring that the LIS is funded into the future. The scheme makes an important contribution to connectivity in rural Ireland. I am also committed to improving connectivity for rural residents, whether it be access to homes, farms or outdoor amenities.

The local improvement scheme was reintroduced by my Department in 2017 following a number of years with no dedicated funding.

From 2017 to 2022, my Department has allocated over €100 million towards improvement works on over 3,600 non-public roads and lanes benefiting over 16,000 landowners and residents in these rural areas.

I launched the 2022 scheme with an initial budget of €11 million. Over the course of the year additional funding was sourced from savings within my Department and I allocated a further €11 million, effectively doubling investment in LIS to bring the total investment this year to €22 million.

I was pleased, as part of budget 2023, to announce an increase in the base funding for LIS to €12 million.

I will continue to monitor expenditure patterns closely next year in my Department and should savings emerge, I will certainly give consideration again to allocating additional funding to the scheme.

Finally, I am continuing to engage with my colleague, the Minister for Transport, regarding his Department contributing to a jointly-funded LIS scheme so that we can further address the high demand under the scheme.

This is a scheme that Deputy Canney was supportive of when he was a Minister of State in the Department as well. It is an important scheme. Any time that there have been savings in other areas it has gone straight into the LIS scheme. Over the past number of years, we have invested €100 million in it and we have managed to get some of these lists down.

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