Clare Fine Gael TD Joe Carey has welcomed an allocation of €556,844 to upgrade local roads throughout the county.
“The funding from the Local Improvement Scheme (LIS) is for the improvement of small roads and laneways in rural parts of Clare that are not under the normal maintenance of Clare County Council,” Deputy Carey explained.
“It is used to carry out improvement works on private and non-publicly maintained roads. Often these roads lead to multiple residences, parcels of land that support agricultural activity or to amenities such as lakes, rivers or beaches”.
Deputy Carey, who is Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Community and Rural Affairs, said that LIS is a lifeline for people living in rural areas because it directly improves their access to and from their homes and farms.
“The improvements carried out under this scheme make a huge difference for people living in rural areas accessing their homes and farms, and it is also used to improve local amenities such as graveyards and beaches for the benefit of the whole community as well as visitors.
“Clare County Council is responsible for identifying and prioritising roads for improvement works under the scheme.
“The Clare allocation comes from an additional €10 million that has been made available nationally under the LIS. This is on top of the €10 million allocated earlier this year to local authorities because Community and Rural Affairs Minister Michael Ring has listened to the demand in local communities for further investment in their local roads.
“It’s great that this additional €10 million is now available and it brings to more than €37 million the amount of money allocated to local authorities by the Minister since he reintroduced the scheme last year”, Deputy Carey said.
Since funding for LIS was reintroduced in September 2017, improvement works have been carried out on more than 1,100 roads that would not otherwise have been repaired as they are not under the normal maintenance of the local authorities.
