A Christmas-style crackdown on speeding and drunken driving is to be introduced by the Garda from midnight tonight.
The Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, said the get-tough policy would last until midnight on Monday in an effort to reduce the number of road fatalities and accidents over the Easter bank holiday weekend.
However while the initiative was being planned, Garda sergeants and inspectors said they were unwilling to participate in the full roll-out of the penalty points system until a computerised network is put in place.
Five people were killed on Irish roads last year during the Easter weekend and the new operation, Operation Taisteal, would see all additional Garda resources being ploughed into reducing that number this year, Mr Byrne said.
Gardaí would set up checkpoints across the country for the five-day operation, which is being co-ordinated on a regional basis.
"The emphasis will be on young people and how they drive because all the figures point to the fact that they are the group involved in the most collisions," Mr Byrne said at the Association of Garda Sergeants' and Inspectors' annual conference in Galway yesterday.
The initiative would target speeding, drunk-driving and "younger driver behaviour", he said.
The Easter clampdown will involve multiple checkpoints, patrols and other forms of high-visibility policing. It would also focus on accident blackspots.
Operation Taisteal was being co-ordinated by the chief superintendent of the Garda Traffic Bureau. Mr Byrne said it was going ahead because Easter was the first "key weekend" of the year during which fatalities normally occur.
It would be similar to the traditional Garda clampdown on the roads during the Christmas and New Year period.
Further similar operations may follow on future bank holiday weekends.