Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael)
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118. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development if she will provide an update on local improvement scheme waiting lists per county; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [53870/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Local Improvement Scheme, or LIS, supports the improvement of rural roads and laneways that are not normally maintained by local authorities. Rural connectivity is an important element in Our Rural Future.Such roads represent a vital piece of infrastructure for rural residents - providing access to people’s homes and farms, as well as outdoor amenities such as lakes, rivers or beaches.

LIS was reintroduced in 2017 following a number of years with no dedicated funding in place. The Scheme is administered locally by the relevant local authority, which is responsible for prioritising and selecting eligible applications within broad parameters set by my Department.

I have prioritised the Scheme in my Department. This year alone I have allocated €22 million to LIS, which is a substantial portion of my Department’s overall capital budget of €208m. While of course there are competing demands on finite resources, in four of the past six years, additional resources were directed to the Scheme mid-year to address strong demand for the scheme across rural Ireland. Since the scheme was reintroduced in 2017, aggregate investment has now surpassed the €100 million mark.

I acknowledge there is strong demand for the Scheme, and in some counties local authorities have declared significant levels of applications on hand. I recently asked my officials to engage with local authorities to ascertain exactly what levels of applications are on hand. As there are significant variances between the returns submitted, I have asked my officials to engage with a number of local authorities to verify the robustness of the data submitted in order to ascertain an accurate overview of the current demand.