Despite promises from the Minister for Transport and the Garda Commissioner's office of a high-visibility enforcement campaign, the gardaí have failed to mount the promised crackdown following the introduction of 31 new penalty point offences.
Extra gardaí were expected to have been assigned to the roads this week to drive home the message that dangerous drivers will be caught and have their licences endorsed.
Last week, chief superintendent John Farrelly, head of the Garda National Traffic Bureau, warned that extra traffic gardaí will be deployed at known "collision-prone zones", where drivers caught breaking the law will be penalised. "This is not a PR exercise, there will be no amnesty for the new penalty point offences," he warned.
However, the promised crackdown has not materialised, despite Farrelly's assurances.
"You will see a significant increase in enforcement activity," he warned. "Drivers must be deterred from breaking the law, and we know driver behaviour can be modified by fear of detection."
Despite his assurances of more gardaí on the roads, it was death on the roads as usual when on Monday - the first day the new penalty points were introduced - four people lost their lives, bringing the total to over 100 killed so far this year.
Labour transport spokeswoman, Róisín Shortall, said that the Government is failing in several areas in its attempts to improve road safety.
"Road deaths are not inevitable and more can be done to prevent further carnage. There are a number of measures that have been promised but have not been delivered," she said.
"There are far too many unqualified drivers on our roads without a full licence. There is a major problem with drink driving. The Garda already has significant powers when it comes to random breath testing, but the Government needs to give them clear direction on this."
Responding to criticism over the lack of a Garda crackdown, a spokesman for the Garda National Traffic Bureau said that there was never going to be a major campaign launched to coincide with the penalty point introduction.
"There is an ongoing campaign to catch and prosecute errant drivers to improve road safety," he said.
But while there has been no crackdown, there are now more gardaí on the roads.
There are 600 dedicated traffic officers now patrolling roads throughout the Republic in both marked and unmarked cars. To strengthen the force in time for the introduction of the new penalty points, 28 new Garda vehicles were commissioned, and an additional 240 officers recruited. In addition, many officers are being issued with new hand-held devices to record and issue penalty points. Five hundred of these new remote terminals are currently being handed out, which, the gardai say, will result in a more efficient penalty issuing system and less administrative work.
The Garda point out that the new hand-held devices and the outsourcing of fine payments, which can now be made at post offices, mean officers can concentrate on catching offenders.
However, there has been criticism that these new computers do not inform officers if a driver has received the maximum 12 penalty points and therefore should not be driving.
Only if a motorist elects to have the case heard in court will officers be required to get further involved, otherwise they simply issue the fine and points at the scene and continue on.
While the majority of Traffic Corps vehicles are high-visibility units, there are also more unmarked patrol cars on the roads. "There will be covert vehicles out there also," confirmed Farrelly. "While high-visibility units have a halo effect and slow cars down, we know that motorists tend to speed up again soon afterwards, so we will also be using covert cars."
By the end of the year, there will be over 800 officers dedicated to policing the roads, a figure that will rise to 1,200 by the end of 2008.