More than 400 motorists were arrested for drink-driving last week, gardaí revealed yesterday.
Provisional statistics show that 411 people were arrested for drink-driving from October 9th-15th, a Garda spokesman said. Many of those arrested were stopped and breathalysed early in the morning.
The figure compares to 323 arrests for drink-driving over the last August bank holiday weekend and a weekly average of 324 motorists arrested over the busy Christmas period last year.
Meanwhile, gardaí have released a list of the 400 most dangerous roads in the State. The list, which was compiled from data collated by the Garda and the National Roads Authority (NRA), will be used to select sites for private speed cameras that are due to be put in place next year.
Last week, The Irish Times reported that the Garda and the NRA were involved in identifying a list of high-risk locations which were to be graded by colour: red for the most dangerous, amber for medium risk and green for low risk.
The zones are eight-kilometre sections of road. According to the Garda research, 57 per cent of the 400 "red zones" are on main national roads, 41 per cent are on regional roads, and just 2 per cent are on rural roads.
The head of the Garda Traffic Bureau, Chief Supt John Farrelly said yesterday: "These are actually facts that we've gathered up. We've looked back over the history for the last 10 and eight years on the roads, and this is the data that's been gathered.
"We've had this information before, but this is the first time that we've actually collated it in such a way that we'll be able to concentrate our efforts."
The NRA and the Garda Traffic Corps have identified 975 stretches of road - each eight kilometres long - following an analysis of road collisions.
Dangerous roads were classified in "zones" of red, amber and green using a points system to rank the number of fatal, serious and minor crashes on a particular stretch
Gardaí also plan to carry out an annual audit of the number of crashes and deaths on these roads to see if changes need to be made to the danger ratings.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio, Chief Supt Farrelly said this was "an intelligent policing system, putting resources into red zone areas where people are being killed. The idea is to stop people being killed. The cameras will primarily be in red zones where people are being killed because of speed."