Leading road safety experts have claimed that a Garda traffic hotline designed to encourage people to report dangerous driving is being allowed to fail due to a lack of resources.
A recent review of the nationwide Traffic Watch hotline ordered by Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy over a year ago has confirmed the mounting complaints about the inefficiency of the system.
Launched nationwide in February 2004, the line (1890 205 805) allows people report dangerous driving to the Gardai so that the drivers can be intercepted, cautioned, and brought through the courts process.
The Garda Siochana's review discovered "quite a lot of calls were not being channelled appropriately" and the findings were now being examined.
However, two leading road safety experts believe that while the hotline number has not officially been discarded, the service is being let die on the vine.
"A number of people called us to complain about not being able to get through to the Garda's hotline," says the AA's Conor Faughnan, while another senior figure in road safety, who wishes to remain anonymous, described the service as a disaster in the face of mounting road fatalities especially amongst young drivers.
"It had the potential to act as a lifesaver, altering behaviour by dissuading motorists from breaking the law and by providing a facility to caution or prosecute those that had - but it has been suffocated through a lack of resources," the senior figure added.
"Many callers to the hotline reach a message asking them to phone back later, or in the rare occasion when they get through to a Garda, are being asked if they were prepared to go to court to give witness evidence, which puts many off.
"Of course, callers can still choose to do this, but it puts the work on the complainant rather than the system itself."
The hotline was piloted in the south east from November 2001 to February 2004 after mounting road deaths in that area.
During the pilot, some 3,800 calls were received, the majority relating to drink driving, leading to some 1,000 cautions but only 30 prosecutions.
Despite these low figures, it found the death rate on the roads in that area was reduced significantly which led to its extension nationwide in February 2004.
Apart from the operational difficulties of getting through on the line, the national service was never really marketed and many drivers are even unaware of its existence, says Faughnan.
"Neither helps and with the Traffic Corps getting on its feet now, Traffic Watch may not formally have been killed off, but it appears to be sidelined and not on anyone's priority list."
A spokesperson for the Garda Traffic Bureau could not reveal the number of calls received or the numbers of cautions or prosecutions made by Traffic Watch since going nationwide.
She said the findings of the Traffic Watch review were now being examined, and there may be some changes relating to call centres.
When questioned on rumours that the scheme is to be withdrawn, no information was available.