The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has announced plans to convene an emergency meeting of road safety agencies in the next fortnight to help stem the carnage on Irish roads.
With road fatalities increasing almost month on month, Mr Brennan believes new measures are needed to target the growing number of deaths that occur in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings.
As well as calling for a "summit meeting" of road safety interest groups, the Minister has asked the Garda, through his Cabinet colleague, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, to deploy more gardaí to traffic duty at weekends, according to a spokesman for Mr Brennan.
The spokesman said the Minister believed the penalty points system - introduced almost two years ago, initially only for speeding - was "continuing to work. The majority of drivers have slowed down and are conscious of penalty points."
However, the spokesman said: "There is a big issue about accidents at the weekend. The number of single-vehicle accidents is increasing, and about 50 per cent of accidents are now taking place between Friday night and Monday morning. It's very clear there is a problem, and it needs urgent attention."
Mr Brennan plans to meet representatives of the Garda, the Department of Justice, the National Safety Council, the National Roads Authority and the Medical Bureau of Road Safety to discuss the changing trends in road deaths.
The meeting has been scheduled ahead of the publication before the end of this month of the State's latest three-year road safety strategy.
The 2004-2006 plan contains a target of reducing road fatalities to below 300 per year. Last year's total was 336, but to the end of last month there were 18 more fatalities this year than in the same period of 2003.
The Government's approach to road safety has been heavily criticised recently by a range of bodies, including the National Road Safety Council, whose chairman, Mr Eddie Shaw, last month blamed a lack of funding for the upsurge in the number of deaths on the roads.
Full computerisation of the penalty points system still has not taken place, and legislation on a new Road Traffic Bill - due to have been enacted before the summer recess - has yet to come before the Dáil.
There was further embarrassment for the Government last July when it emerged that publication of the 2004-2006 road safety strategy had been delayed because it had to be translated into Irish in accordance with new place-names legislation.
In a separate development, Mr Brennan has asked the Medical Bureau of Road Safety to carry out a toxicology study of victims who are killed at peak danger times.
The Minister's spokesman said Mr Brennan hoped to have the results of the study "as a matter of urgency" in order establish whether common factors were responsible for peak-time accidents.
This weekend's 10 fatalities bring to 273 the total number of road deaths this year.
