The most recent road-traffic legislation included changes which would close the loophole regarding speeding offences which was exposed this week, the Minister for Justice said yesterday.
Mr McDowell was commenting on a High Court ruling on Monday that the use of the laser gun, which does not produce a written or other permanent record of the alleged speed, breached requirements of the Road Traffic Act, 2002.
It has led to speculation that many legal challenges will be made to future speeding prosecutions.
However, yesterday the Department of Transport, which is responsible for the legislation, insisted that the new Road Traffic Act, 2004, which came into effect on January 20th clarified the situation.
A Department spokeswoman said officials would not be commenting on the court judgment until they had read the complete ruling.
The Department had become aware of the issue previously. A narrow interpretation of the word "record" in referring to speeding equipment in previous legislation, the Road Traffic Act, 2002, had been made by some judges.
After seeking legal advice from the Attorney General, the new Road Traffic Act, 2004, clarified that situation.
"We have clarified the interpretation of 'record'. It makes explicit provisions for both types of speeding equipment," she said.
The new legislation is contained in Section 15 of the Road Traffic Act, 2004.
"The new Act came into effect on January 20th so any cases taken since then are legally solid," she said.
Mr McDowell said it was very frustrating for members of An Garda Síochána to find that the legislature did not give them the law that went along with the laser-controlled speed guns.
It was an unfortunate error that the previous legislation didn't correspond with the equipment the gardaí had, he said.
With the new traffic corps coming on stream motorists should be aware they would face a very vigorous enforcement of the law going forward, he added.
The Assistant Commissioner, Mr Eddie Rock, head of the new traffic corps, said: "I'm just taking up my position and I am looking forward. Whatever has happened with the legislation has happened.
"We've got to work now to the future and put our policies in place, put high-visibility policing in place, and reduce deaths on the roads by focusing on speeding and drink-driving."
A spokesman for the Courts Service said there was no backlog of speeding cases. Two judges had been dismissing the cases and others had dealt with them in the normal way.