Road Network Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-22 ============================================================ Jerry Buttimer (FG), Cork South-Central I hear what the Senator has said and the figure of €5 million he mentioned. Kerry County Council has been allocated over €1.3 million for the LIS this year bringing its total allocation to €12.7 million since 2017. I encourage and support our local authorities to ensure the continued and effective use of this funding in supporting our rural communities. It is an important scheme. The programme for Government makes clear its support for the LIS and the Minister, Deputy Calleary, and I are committed to ensuring this funding continues to be utilised in an efficient and effective manner. We will hold the councils to account in the case of underspend and underutilisation. We expect local authorities to continue to deliver efficiently on the scheme across Ireland. It has a huge benefit. Our officials will continue to engage to ensure the funding is fully utilised. I will ask officials to review the allocation mechanism to look at how we can allocate and reallocate available funding for the schemes to County Kerry. The Senator said there is an extraordinary number of roads and a high number of applicants waiting. I think 580 are waiting for approval. I will sit down with the Senator and work with him to see what we can do to ensure the fund for Kerry is increased. I will not make any false promises but the points he makes are valid. They are a lifeline for rural communities. It is about accessibility to their own farmland and to tourism and heritage sites. I hear what he is saying and I will bring his remarks back. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-22