Out of 122 people to have died on Irish roads since the beginning of 2006, 19 - or 15.5% - have so far been identified as eastern Europeans.

The total number of road deaths for this year is an increase of 20 on the same period last year.

Gay Byrne, head of the new Road Safety Authority, last night expressed alarm at the growing number of foreign nationals dying on Irish roads.

Byrne told the Sunday Tribune that the issue of non-Irish fatalities would be one of the key areas to be analysed by the new authority when it is formally established next month.

"There does appear to be a disproportionate amount of foreign nationals dying on our roads, " he said. "We are going to have to look at that in order to figure out why that is. There hasn't been enough research on the matter yet, all we know are the bare facts."

Byrne said that road safety would improve only with a change in driver attitude, a view also expressed by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern earlier this week when he claimed that nine out of 10 crashes were caused by driver behaviour.

"Of course driver behaviour is to blame for most road deaths, " said Byrne. "People say, ?but the roads are bad', but I see people driving on these bad roads and they still insist on driving as though they are on the M50. We need a major change in driver attitude."

The latest fatal road accident in Cork, in which four Polish men in their 20s and 30s died, brought to eight the number of Polish people killed on Irish roads so far this year.

The young men died when the car they were travelling in was hit by a truck at Goggins Hill, Ballinhassig outside Cork city after 10pm on Good Friday.

It was the second accident this year in which more than three people died, coming almost two months after a crash in Buncrana, Co Donegal which claimed the lives of four Latvian nationals and a man from Lithuania. Along with eight victims from Poland, five of this year's road victims were from Latvia, two from the Czech Republic, two from Lithuania, one from Romania, and one from Moldova. The nationality of one further victim of a fatal road accident is as yet unidentified.

Friday's Cork crash brought to 16 the number of people who have died on the county's roads this year. Cork has the highest number of road deaths in Ireland this year, accounting for 14% of all fatal accidents occuring in the country.

When its neighbouring county of Tipperary is taken into the equation, statistics reveal that over one in five - 22% - of all road deaths occur in that region. Cork/Tipperary is now the worst hit area for road fatalities, with 26 deaths in just three-and-a-half months.

Twenty-one deaths - 17% of all fatalities - have occured in counties along the northern border.

Although one-third of the population lives in Dublin, only 7.5% of road deaths occur in that area.

As of yesterday afternoon, this Easter bank holiday weekend had already seen the highest number of fatalities for the period on Irish roads in over five years, with eight people killed in road accidents since Thursday morning, including the four men in the Cork incident.

Three people died in road accidents on Holy Thursday.

They were 35-year-old Colin Broughan, from Greystones, Co Wicklow; Josie Daly (67), of Mullingar, Co Westmeath;
and Stephen O'Brien (20), of Clane, Co Kildare.

At 6am yesterday, a male in his mid-20s was fatally injured when a vehicle he was driving collided with two horses at Garlow Cross, Navan, Co Meath. The identity of the victim was not being made public until family members had been informed.