A young man has been killed and four other have been seriously injured in two separate overnight crashes on the State's roads.
In Co Kerry a young man has been killed after his car hit a pole near the village of Ballyduff on the Tralee and Ballybunion.
A woman who was in the car is in a serious condition in Kerry General hospital. Both are thought to be in their twenties. The road is expected to remain closed for a number of hours while gardai conduct a technical examination.
Three men are in hospital with serious injuries when the car they were travelling in crashed into a wall at Hughes Lot on the Dualla Road in Cashel at 10.15 last night.
No other car is though to be involved. Two of the men are being treated at Our Lady's Hospital in Cashel while the third has been transferred to University Hospital Cork with serious head injuries.
A 27-year-old man remains in a critical condition in hospital in Beaumont Hospital Dublin following a collision between two cars in Co Monaghan in which four young men died.
The accident happened at Three Mile House shortly after 2am yesterday morning.
The dead men were have been named by gardaí as Brian O'Neill (19), Ciaran Hagan (20), Gary Mc Cormick (20) and Dermot Thornton (21).
This brings to 303 the number of people who have been killed on the roads. It also marks the failure of the Government's Road Safety Strategy, which set a target of no more than 300 fatalities for all of 2006.