Gardaí believe a major clampdown on speeding and other driving offences has reduced the holiday weekend accident toll.
There have been no fatal accidents since Operation Taisteal began on Thursday. I think that speaks for itself," a spokeswoman said. Five people were killed and over 130 were injured on the roads on Easter weekend last year.
Some 5,000 gardaí are on traffic duty for the operation, which ends tonight at midnight. Speeding, drink-driving, the non-wearing of seatbelts and the "driving behaviour of young male drivers" are the main targets of the checkpoints mounted as part of the clampdown.
In Northern Ireland, however, the holiday weekend was marred by a crash in which three men died in Co Tyrone yesterday.
The accident happened on the Beechvalley Road in Dungannon, when the car the men were travelling in struck a wall at about 4 a.m. The occupants, all in their 20s, died at the scene. No other vehicle was involved.
Police forensic officers were examining the scene yesterday to discover what caused the crash, which happened on a relatively straight stretch of road on the outskirts of the town.
The dead men have been named as Mr Barry McDonald and Mr Neil Morrow, both aged 20 and from Dungannon, and Mr John-Paul Reilly (23), from Enniskillen.
Mr McDonald's father, Barry, was shot dead in Donaghmore, near Dungannon this time last year. The taxi driver was thought by his family to have been shot by republicans. Locals said Mr McDonald jnr was the third member of his family to die on the roads.
The latest fatalities bring the death toll on Northern Ireland's roads to 54 so far this year. A total of 41 people were killed in the same period last year. Road deaths in the Republic are down about 25 per cent on last year.
Meanwhile, gardaí have opened an investigation into the death of a woman whose body was recovered from Malahide Marina in north Co Dublin early yesterday morning.
It is believed the woman may have fallen from a boat around 1 a.m. Her identity has not yet been released.
In Waterford city the body of a 30-year-old man who disappeared in the early hours of April 13th was recovered from St John's River near the Tesco outlet at Poleberry on Saturday.
Mr Shane Fitzgerald, from Kilmacleague, Dunmore East, had been missing since the early hours of the previous Sunday. Gardaí are investigating the possibility that he fell into the river accidentally.
Meanwhile, the young man who drowned in Galway Bay on Friday was named by Gardai yesterday as Shane Rabbitte (19) of Castlepark, Galway.
Gardaí in Finglas have appealed for witnesses to a hit-and-run accident on Wellmount Road on Saturday morning. The accident, at 8.50 a.m., left a 21-year-old female pedestrian in a critical condition in James Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown. She was hit by a black Ford Mondeo car.
Anyone with information is asked to contact gardaí in Finglas at 01-6667500 or the Garda Confidential Telephone at: 1 800 666 111.