In places in rural Ireland such as Kilgarvan, Gortderrig, and Headfort, when a bridge on a local road goes down, why does it take 12 months or more to reopen these roads? It is a massive inconvenience to go on a five- or seven-mile detour for farmers, contractors and school buses. Even the ambulance came up on the wrong side for one very sick man and was delayed by over an hour finding the way back to where it should have been. It is all because of statutory processes that the Department is requesting, including environmental and planning assessments for structures that have been in place for more than 140 years. If this was in Dublin or Cork city, people would not be inconvenienced to this extent. Why are we allowing this to happen?

I thank the Deputy. His time is up.

Deputy Aindrias Moynihan was speaking earlier. The road from Top of Coom to Ballingarry was closed for two years because of these silly requests.

Please, Deputy.

People's lives are being utterly changed because of this delay.

I thank the Deputy for raising the point. I do not know whether he has been in touch with his county council.

Of course I have. Johnny Healy-Rae and Maura Healy-Rae have the phone broken trying to get these bridges open.

The Deputy has a fair bit of representation on Kerry County Council. He might more readily know why there has been a failure to get these bridges rebuilt more quickly. When a bridge falls down or collapses, I presume there are significant safety issues that have to be investigated. I agree that the sooner road structures can be restored to facilitate travel and so on, the better.

It is up to two years.