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

The Deputy is right that this year I allocated over €30 million. That is treble the funding that was available for the LIS a couple of years ago. Any time I find savings in my Department, the first place they go is into the LIS. That goes to show my commitment to the scheme. The Deputy knows himself that this scheme was previously funded by the Department of Transport, which has a very sizeable capital budget compared with my Department's. I believe the Department of Transport has a role to play here. If it were to start to provide matched funding, we could start to make real inroads into these waiting lists. I have raised this with the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and have not made an awful lot of headway but I will keep trying. The Department of Rural and Community Development is not letting the side down. We have put over €130 million into the LIS since 2017. A lot of counties have their lists well down at this stage, but I accept that Kerry and Cork are big counties and need more.

Deputy Moynihan asked me about the eligibility criteria. I cannot start looking at that until I clear this backlog, and that is being straight with him. There is no point in making the list longer and longer. I will try to clear the backlog first, and then we can look at eligibility.

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