The Government of Ireland will roll out a nationwide network of mobile speed cameras by mid-2010 after it signed a deal with a private consortium to deploy 45 cameras.

The €65m five-year contract has been awarded to GoSafe consortium led by Irish firm Spectra, including Australian firm Redflex and French company EGIS Projects.

The cameras will perform speed checks at almost 700 locations identified by police as emergency black spots, providing more than 6,000h of speed checks per month across the country.

Almost 3% of checks will be carried out on motorways and dual carriageways, 50% on national roads and the remainder on non-national roads.

The camera project will be run by police operating in the new Garda Office for Safety Camera Management and is aimed at preventing accidents.

Speeding has cost at least 157 lives in Ireland over the past three years. It has also left 310 seriously injured and 1,278 with minor injuries, according to officials.