Rose Conway-Walsh Demands Action on Underfunded LIS Roads
Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh raised concerns about severe underfunding of LIS roads and urged the minister and the Department of Environment to ensure local authorities take over completed LIS roads to reduce growing backlogs. She warned residents are paying property tax while some do not have access to their homes because of unresolved road issues.
Key demand
The deputy asked the minister and the Department of Environment to examine the number of LIS roads that have been taken over by local authorities and to provide clear instructions and resources so councils can assume responsibility for completed LIS roads.
Funding history and minister's response
The minister responded by outlining the scheme's history, noting it was originally run by the Department of Transport and was reintroduced under the rural department by the predecessor minister. The minister acknowledged the scale of backlog exceeds his department's resources and said he has raised co-funding with the other relevant minister, who did not rule it out but whose budgets are committed for the year.
Calls for local authority action
The minister urged local authorities to spend the funds available to them this year and suggested that any unspent monies at year end could be considered for diversion into LIS schemes. He committed to continue raising the funding issue and to look at the situation if spare money becomes available.
Local impact and accountability
The deputy highlighted the local consequences of underfunding: increasing numbers of LIS roads remain outside council maintenance, stretching finite resources and leaving communities paying property tax without guaranteed access to their homes. The debate concluded with a note that time had run out for further discussion.
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Thank you Minister for answering those questions on LIS. I would argue as well that Mayo is one of the largest counties with the most number of LIS roads as well but what I want to say to you Minister is as well as the severe underfunding and the impact that has and the fact that people are now paying property tax and they don't have access to their homes is a huge problem but could I ask you that you would with the Department of Environment look at the number of LIS roads that have been taken over by local authorities because one of the biggest problems is that the roads the LIS roads once they're done they're not being taken in hand by the local authorities and that means that the numbers aren't reducing all of the time so you have more and more roads being taken out of the same pot and I really think that there needs to be an instruction and resources given to the local authorities to be able to take over these LIS roads to come under the council. Thank you Minister to conclude. Thank you and thank both deputies for raising this. I am very familiar with LIS schemes and I can understand both of the issues you have raised regarding funding and can I just say that just to give you a little bit of history on the LIS schemes, it was originally a Department of Transport scheme and in fairness to my predecessor Minister Michael Ring, he recognised there was a clear need for this scheme and he reintroduced it under the rural department but the scale of the backlogs in local authorities is far beyond the resources of my department alone and I have raised the issue of co-funding with Minister Ryan and in fairness he didn't rule it out but his budgets for this year are committed and I will continue to raise it with the Minister and perhaps he might have some unspent monies in other areas that we could divert into the LIS schemes so I would say to local authorities what you have this year get it spent and if there is any spare money at the end of the year I will certainly do what I can or look at the situation at that stage. In terms of the We are out of time Minister We are out of time Minister
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