The National Safety Council has questioned the will of the Government to implement the five-year Road Safety Strategy, which aims to cut annual road deaths to about 380 by 2002.
The chairman of the council, Mr Eddie Shaw, said his members were frustrated at the pace of work on areas that would enhance the enforcement impact of the gardai and described the pace as "deadly slow".
He said it was imperative that additional investment was granted for new technology.
He was speaking at the publication of the council's report for 1999.
"In the current environment of budgetary surplus, there is no justification whatsoever for the delay in fully funding and resourcing this life-saving programme," said Mr Shaw, who added that he wondered if the political will existed to tackle road deaths. "In three critical and interdependent areas of supporting legislation for the penalty points system - the development of a drivers' register and investment in an integrated technology-based enforcement programme - progress is deadly slow," he said.
Mr Shaw warned that the work of the council in educating young people could not make an immediate impact on the road figures, which stood at 413 deaths in 1999. He said their programmes to change attitudes would only work in the context of higher levels of enforcement aimed at changing the behaviour of drivers. The National Roads Authority, which is responsible for engineering aspects of the three-pronged strategy, have been "leading lights" in the strategy, according to Mr Shaw.
He said there appeared to be "a huge reluctance" on the part of the Department of the Environment to deal with the provisional licence issue and urged a more restrictive process where young people would view a licence as a "privilege, not a right". However, he said he did not doubt the Department's commitment to the overall strategy.
Mr Shaw criticised the Department of Justice for not granting the Garda adequate staffing to work towards the introduction of new technology in 1998 and taking a year to make its decision on the issue.
He said much hope was being placed on the introduction of the penalty point system, expected early next year, but stressed it was "not a solution in its own right" as huge investments in technology needed to be made to enable the point system and the proposed speed camera network to work.
A database of drivers' registers needed to be of a standard to support the new enforcement measures, Mr Shaw said. The register is still under construction. "The road strategy is a chain of events and one weak link is going to break that strategy."
The primary targets set out in the 1998 Government document have already been lowered in an interim report published last month. Mr Shaw said the new figures were based on more recent data, which showed that over 60 per cent of cars speeded and only 57 per cent of drivers wore a seat belt. He described the data as "depressing reading".