UPDATED AT 10.15am While the Garda website is crashed, TheJournal.ie brings you the locations covered by the new mobile speed cameras. (Thanks to @ManAboutCouch and @CiaranMaher for their help)

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MOTORISTS RUSHING TO check which roads will be monitored by new mobile speed cameras have crashed the Garda Siochana website. The website www.garda.ie posted a list of the areas to be covered by the new privatised network of cameras at the weekend.A Garda spokesman told TheJournal.ie that the sheer volume of visitors to their website had crashed the site overnight. The spokesman said:

We have our IT people looking at it now. I’d safely say it’s linked to the traffic onto the site at the weekend looking at the list (of areas). We are being told it will be back up fairly soon.

The new cameras are going live from midnight tonight, he confirmed. They will be carried around in clearly marked vans – the Garda Siochana is intending that they will be a road safety precaution rather than a revenue-gathering exercise, according to today’s Irish Times.

However, motorists caught speeding by the new cameras will earn penalty points and fines. The 45 mobile cameras will provide 6,000 hours of speed checks across 600 locations in Ireland. They are being run by the GoSafe consortium for the next five years after the consortium signed a €65m five-year contract with gardai and Justice Minister Dermot Ahern this time last year.

It is the first time the gardai have outsourced a policing issue to a private company, although the operation will be overseen by the Garda Office for Safety Camera Management. Regular Garda speed checks will also remain in place. These include eight mobile cameras in vans, 400 handheld cameras and over 100 automatic number plate recognition cameras in Garda cars.