Fine Gael has attacked the Government over the fact there are only three speed cameras monitoring motorists across the Republic's entire road network.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny
Speaking in the Dáil this morning ahead of the busy May bank holiday weekend, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny revealed that the cameras were rotated between 20 fixed camera boxes in the Dublin/Meath/Louth area. However nine of these are currently broken and it will take up to eight months to repair them, he said.
Mr Kenny said the facts came from a reply to a Dáil question submitted by the party's transport spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell to Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.
"It seems incredible it takes so long to repair a wooden box on top of a pole," Mr Kenny said. "We have three speed cameras with only half the number of boxes that are operable.
"It's a shame that the Government is not in a position to apply speed camera boxes to implement the law of the land."
Appealing for motorists to take care on the roads this weekend, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern reiterated that speed cameras had been extended around the country but "there's still not enough" of them.
"I can't answer you why, when we're spending over a billion euro on roads, why it takes eight months to fix a speed camera box," he said.
"I'll do a FAS course to find out how to fix speed cameras. There shouldn't be speed cameras broken longer than a few hours."
Raising the issue during Leaders' Questions in the chamber, Mr Kenny said he travelled around the country a lot and had recently seen several motorbikes speeding.
He said the traffic corps has only been increased by 33 gardaí this year and that he had travelled over 1,000 kilometres last week and only met one checkpoint.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern
"Is it good enough that after two-and-a-half years, only four out of a possible 70 offences are covered by penalty points? He asked. "Is it good enough that the special high-level road safety group, which met in a blaze of publicity after a horrific week last September, has not met for six months?"
But Mr Ahern assured the Dáil that there had been an enormous amount of effort put into road safety over the last seven years. "While the deaths over a few bad weekends admittedly are high, road safety continues to be a huge priority for the Government.
"It is the speed of people on the road. People are engaged in speeding. You cannot have a garda on every road, on every motorway, on every back road in the country to monitor people's habits of driving," the Taoiseach said.
"You have to appeal to the good sense of drivers. In fairness, taking the enormous increase in traffic in this country, the accidents proportionally are not out of line, but any death is a death too many."