Mr. Michael Rowland:

Yes.

We made a number of recommendations in the submission to the Department of Transport. The submission was based on a previous submission we had made in 2019. We recommended a speed of 20 km/h at that time. Given the vulnerability of road users and that these are unprotected vehicles, we felt that a 20 km/h speed limit was an appropriate one for consideration. I know the Minister suggested 25 km/h. I do not disagree with that, but we suggest that 20 km/h would be an even better speed limit.

On the age of users of powered vehicles, again, we felt that given that they can achieve quite significant speeds on the roads and that anybody under 16 would not have the necessary skill sets or abilities to use them in a safe manner. It is important that whoever uses them has the ability to use them and we were concerned that children could get their hands on these vehicles and that they could be seen as a toy when in actual fact they are a means of transport. That was the important issue for us in terms of the age being set at 16 years or older for potential users of electric scooters.

It is not within our gift to say where the scooters can be used, but we suggested that they could be used in 30 km/h zones and that they should not be used on high-speed roads. We also made a recommendation that, if possible, we need to limit their use in areas where there is a proliferation of heavy goods vehicles. Those are among the recommendations that we have made.

You referred, Chairman, to the local authorities. One of the suggestions was that it could be done nationally, or it could be done by local authorities. It will be up to the Department to decide. What is important is to ensure that we do not have an over-proliferation of these vehicles. We have seen situations where there has been an over-proliferation-----