The Departments of Justice and Finance have been warned they need to provide "active support" to the Minister of Transport, Mr Brennan, if he is to be successful in reducing the number of deaths on the roads.
Mr Brennan is expected to exert pressure on his Cabinet colleagues in Finance and Justice to provide the resources to put extra gardaí on the State's roads after accidents last weekend claimed the lives of 11 people.
He is also expected to ask the Garda Commissioner to redeploy officers to concentrate on policing the State's roads. He has already asked for more traffic units to be on duty during weekend danger periods.
The Irish Times understands that the Department of Transport will also seek assurances from the Garda that speed traps will be located in accident blackspots, such as narrow country roads, instead of concentrating on built-up areas with low speed limits.
Mr Brennan called a crisis meeting of road safety interests after what was the worst weekend for fatalities this year. The National Safety Council, the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, the National Roads Authority as well as representatives of Government departments will attend the meeting in the coming days to discuss the mounting number of fatalities on the roads this year.
The NSC chairman, Mr Eddie Shaw, said Mr Brennan was "very restricted on his own" in ensuring adequate enforcement of road safety laws. "He needs active support from Justice and Finance and, to a lesser extent, the Department of Health."
He said the Departments needed to realise that money spent on road safety was money well spent. "You have to see it as an investment activity," he added. "You have got to create the reality of enforcement with a speed physical garda presence on the network."
Mr Shaw pointed out that in the four months following the introduction of the penalty points system in November, 2002, road deaths totalled 84. "This is equal to 240 a year, which is as good as it gets. People's behaviour changed, they were afraid that they would get caught and ultimately be put off the road.
"But the perception of enforcement was quite different from reality and behaviour gradually disimproved." Already this year 272 people have died on the State's roads, an increase of 38 on the same period last year.
Opposition parties have criticised Mr Brennan's handling of the road safety issue. They want the swift introduction of a dedicated traffic corps.
The Fine Gael transport spokesman, Mr Denis Naughten, TD, said Mr Brennan's response "makes a mockery of this Government's approach to road safety".
"The Minister says he has asked the Garda Síochána to increase the number of gardaí on road duty at the weekends, but there simply aren't the resources to do this. He is fully aware of this, given that Garda representatives have already warned that they are severely under-resourced.
"The Government has consistently refused to set up a dedicated Garda traffic corps, when this would be the most logical response to tackling road deaths."
The Labour party's spokeswoman on transport, Ms Roisin Shortall, said Mr Brennan's "failures to date on so many fronts have contributed to the carnage". She criticised delays in the publication of the 2004-2006 Road Safety Strategy and the delay in bringing the Road Traffic Bill before the Dáil prior to the summer recess.
"In fact, Seamus Brennan's obsession with breaking-up the State's airports has come at the cost of road safety, after the Government opted to rush through the Aer Rianta Bill rather than implement the Road Traffic Bill before the summer recess," she said.
A spokesman for Mr Brennan said the Bill would be brought before the Dáil "almost immediately" when it resumes. The Bill will provide for the introduction of privatised speed cameras, random breath-testing, the conversion of speeds to kilometre per hour, and the banning of the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving.
On the issue of a dedicated traffic corps the spokesman said that some 700 gardaí are currently assigned to traffic policing duties across the State, although they have other functions. "We don't control the guards," he added, "but certainly more use could be made of existing traffic corps".
