2026-05-21

92. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht if there are plans to increase local improvement scheme, LIS, funding in Kerry; the reasons the funding was cut between 2025 and 2026; if he will ensure that funding is increased in budget 2027; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38220/26]

I want to ask the Minister about the LIS funding scheme, in particular relating to County Kerry. A significant number of roads are on the list. While I appreciate Kerry County Council is doing the best it can, it is only able to address a limited number per year.

I thank the Deputy for his interest in this. As I said in reply to Deputy Stanley, since we introduced the LIS in 2017, over €200 million has been allocated to local authorities. The Minister of State and I confirmed the 2026 scheme will have an additional initial funding application of €17.5 million, representing an increase. Kerry County Council was allocated €1.13 million in initial funding for LIS in 2026, representing an increase in the initial allocation of over €1 million in 2025. Following our announcement of a supplementary budget of €14 million in August last year, Kerry received additional funding of over €1.2 million in 2025. The total Kerry allocation for 2025 represents a 44% increase on the 2024 allocation. We are committed to ensuring that the LIS scheme in Kerry and, indeed, nationally remains well-funded. We are engaging with local authorities. We have given the go-ahead for the initial 2026 programme to proceed. We are closely monitoring our spend in the capital area across the Department to ensure any savings that emerge in the Department can be redistributed to LIS. I am very much aware of the challenge in Kerry regarding outstanding roads. Some 37 roads were completed in 2025. Kerry County Council did not send any money back to my Department in terms of underspend, which I welcome. I am also conscious of the outstanding roads to be addressed in the county. As I said, I could invest the entire budget of my Department in LIS and still have outstanding roads. I am focused on addressing this. We are focused on introducing uniformity across the country in the spend on LIS. With that uniformity, we can get more roads done.

I thank the Minister. The difficulty and the reason Kerry should be treated as more of an exception than other counties, such as the midland counties, is that there are 580 roads in the scheme for the county. I appreciate 37 were done last year but if we do the maths on that, we are talking the best part of 20 years. A lot of the people who are contacting me from places like Ballinglanna near Causeway, Tiershanaghan, Ballyheigue, Kilgulbin, Ardfert, Ballyconry near Ballyduff and Dromid in south Kerry will be drawing their pension, if they are lucky, by the time these roads are addressed. I appreciate there has been funding since 2017 but the problem with that is the list was closed in 2018 because there were so many roads in Kerry on it and it has not been opened for the past eight years. That is the scale of the problem we are dealing with in the county.

I agree. Looking at the figures, it is a particularly long list in Kerry. The Deputy is not the only Kerry Deputy who has made a special case for the county; there is also the Minister for Education and Youth, Deputy Foley, and other colleagues. We have put over €200 million into the LIS in less than ten years. It has made a difference around the country. I am aware of the length of the waiting lists and I am aware of the scheme. I make a very special case indeed for County Mayo, given its size, but I have other competing capital priorities. What the Minister of State and I have done last year is that where we can identify capital savings in the Department, we have targeted them towards LIS. It may not always be possible to do that but LIS will be a priority project as long as the Minister of State and I are in the Department. I also say this to other Departments: the role of rural roads is not just for our Department. Other Departments have to step up. They are doing that but collectively, we could do a lot more. Our per km spend is an issue we are looking at as well. All local authorities need to have a certain band within which they spend on LIS. We do not need gold-plated roads; we need roads.

I thank the Minister for the reply. I will give some background and context on this. I am glad he mentioned local and regional roads because there were many announcements from certain Deputies in County Kerry that there was increased roads funding for the county but the local and regional roads funding was actually slashed by €2 million. Villages like Ballyduff, Fenit, Abbeydorney and Glenbeigh have no wastewater infrastructure. There is basically an Imhoff tank, or a hole in the ground, where the sewage is going into and they cannot develop in those areas. Inflation has surged costs for the materials, labour and fuel, in addition to all of the heavy rainfall from climate change, which is digging into roads and making the roads that have been repaired in need of patching. I am talking about local and regional roads, such as Knocknacaska outside Kilflynn, where there has been a solar farm proposed. Despite all the great work it is doing, the council is playing catch-up. It is galling for people in Kerry to look at the nearly €500 million spent on MetroLink without a sod being turned and they cannot get to school, work or their businesses without going over potholed roads.

As well as giving us a tour of Kerry, the Deputy has raised a very important issue. I share the Deputy's concern about the severity of rain and the damage it is doing, as well as the severity of hard winters that are damaging roads. The Minister of State and I will be looking within the Department at some sort of uniformity. Some councils are spending a lot more per km than others. The disparity is quite significant. I do not want to be in a situation where we dictate to councils how they spend their money. That would be wrong. Equally, we want to make sure the money we invest in LIS is spent on tar and roads and not on administration or positions. That is not the position in Kerry. We are very aware and conscious of the pressure on capital budgets, especially keeping in mind cost increases over the past three months. We will engage with our colleagues in the Department on spending and looking at LIS. The Minister of State assures me there has not been a cut in the Department of Transport for regional roads but I will certainly engage with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, on that one.

The Deputy heard from the Minister for Transport, Deputy O'Brien, the last day. He is pressing the recurring button the whole time.