Leitrim county council needs a 'couple of million' to clear LIS list

Leitrim County Council would need a "couple of million" to clear the backlog of LIS projects going on in the county, the budget meeting heard this week. 

With just 16 schemes completed in 2025, councillors estimated that the current scheme won't be completed for another six of seven years. 

Cllr Gary Prior asked if the relevant department had been contacted to seek substantial additional funding. 

He stressed: "We keep bringing it up at every council meeting and there are many people asking when will the LIS scheme be opened."

Cllr Sean McGowan said that council are "only getting a pittance around €300,000 to €350,000 for the scheme. If there are one or two schemes that comes in at over €100,000, we can only do four or five in a year. We need a substantial injection of funding to try and get it down."

He added: "We received 200 application and we're still only at 120. It's going to take six or seven years to try and get it open again. We do need to press home to the department that we need additional funding. It's a worthwhile scheme held up due to lack of funding."

It was noted that a new allocation of €500,000 from the office of the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Dara Calleary by Cllr Enda McGloin who went on to say that more funding would still be needed.

He said that "something in the region of a couple of million euro" was needed to clear the current backlog. 

David Minton, director of services, said that he understood the frustration in relation to the delivery of scheme with a significant backlog.

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He stressed: "We continue to liaise with the department and understand the "demand out there for the scheme"

Cllr Paddy O'Rourke said: "We are constantly making the case of the LIS but there are an awful lot of families that are trapped on dead end public roads. I've gotten a lot of letters back in recent times regarding roads that were included for LIS and are now, following an investigation by the roads office, deemed to have been public roads and are now ineligible for LIS. In some cases, it's only part of the road and this is causing a lot of confusion. Some residents say that they were under LIS previously yet they are now only eligible for a CIS that we know is moving at a snail's pace."

He added: "There is no other county in Ireland that has the same dependency on these smaller roads" before adding that driving over roads in need of repair on a daily basis is causing damage to people's cars. "You know every day you use it on that road, you're building up a big bill for test centre."

He concluded: "We need to step up our campaign to the minister and get our facts together in terms of how many are on the waiting list. It can't go on this way. Particularly now there are projects that were thought to be LIS but now have to go under CIS."