AA Ireland have called on the State to pump money into the Garda Traffic Corps after a survey has found just over 1 in 8 drivers have come across a Garda checkpoint in the past month.
The findings come after an AA Car Insurance survey revealed just under 14% of 3,000 drivers said they had been stopped by gardai last month.
Nearly 27% reported that they had been stopped at a checkpoint in the past six months and nearly 10% of respondents said they had never been stopped by gardai.
The figure of 40.8% of motorists being stopped by a Garda remains consistent with similar research carried out by the organisation last year, while also highlighting a significant increase in the number of checkpoints in the past 3 years.
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Conor Faughnan, AA Director of Consumer Affairs said: “During the worst years of the decision the government quite recklessly cut funding to the Garda Traffic Corps but, to the credit of the Garda Síochána, even though that funding hasn’t fully recovered they have undertaken significant measures to ensure they can still effectively police our roads.
“However, now that the numbers of checkpoints have somewhat recovered, we need to ensure that this continues to grow moving forward and in order to achieve that we need Government to commit to providing Gardaí with the investment, resources and manpower that they require.”
However, the AA expressed some concern around the time of day which checkpoints are being carried out in response to the findings of the survey."
Nearly 32% of checkpoints were carried out between 12pm and 5pm and just under 2% said they came across a checkpoint between midnight and 6am - a time which the AA highlights as being particularly dangerous on Irish roads.
Mr Faughan added: “This is where we need to have an argument of quality vs. quantity when it comes to our checkpoints.
From our point of view, even if a checkpoint at 2am only encountered a small number of cars but took 4 or 5 drink-drivers off the road that that is a much more successful operation that checking hundreds of slow-moving vehicles in slow-moving, rush hour traffic.”
