Safety campaigners have welcomed what was a relatively safe August bank holiday weekend on the roads.
As of yesterday evening, there were no reported road deaths over Saturday, Sunday and Monday of the bank holiday, which has in the past been one of the worst periods in the year for road fatalities and injuries.
The Garda Síochána road-safety campaign for the weekend focused on drink-driving.
Gardaí maintained a visible presence at checkpoints and monitored licensed premises and driving and drunken behaviour in each Garda division over the weekend.
The high-visibility campaign ended at midnight last night.
One man was fatally injured in a road collision at Tyrrellspass, Co Westmeath, on Friday. He was named on Sunday as Christopher Drysdale, New Row South, Christchurch, Dublin.
Brian Farrell of the National Safety Council said he hoped the bank holiday weekend would see no further loss of life on the roads.
"You would have to go far back into the records to find a weekend quite like it."
While he did not want to pre-empt what might happen overnight, if it stayed the same, he said, it would be very welcome.
During the previous seven-day period there were 12 deaths, which was an appalling loss of life, Mr Farrell added. It perhaps served as a reminder to everybody.
"Undoubtedly the Garda presence does make a difference. A visible presence on the roads obviously gets the message across."
Fatalities over the last five years had averaged at about five deaths every August bank holiday, he said, so this weekend would be very much below average.
Nobody in the Garda Síochána would comment on the situation last night. A Garda press office spokeswoman said last night that there were still some hours to go before the campaign ended.
Over the August bank holiday last year five people were killed and 89 injured on the roads. Arrests for drink-driving offences have increased by 16 per cent to 872 for the first six months of this year compared to 2004.
In 2002, nine people were killed on the roads over the August holiday weekend. In 2003 there were five.
In total 33 people have died and 548 people were injured over August bank holidays between 2000 and 2004.