Mr. Ray O'Leary:

As one of the earlier speakers said, many of what are called scramblers are just illegal motorbikes being used for scrambling purposes. They are regulated in the same way as any other motorbike when they are on the road in a public place and subject to the road traffic law. As was also pointed out earlier, this legislation will bring in a kind of parallel system mechanism under which these scramblers can be regulated when they are in spaces not traditionally covered by road traffic law. The legislation also increases the capacity of the Garda to follow up after events involving these scramblers.

A subset of vehicles exists in which the machines concerned are not considered as mechanically propelled vehicles, MPVs, because they do not meet the standards that MPVs are required to have to be used on the public road. We could call these the pure sports scrambler motorbikes. Some of those vehicles are also abused, but the point here is that those machines will still be subject to the same enforcement tools. Those motorbikes can be legitimately used, such as by people who participate in motocross and who do scrambling perfectly legitimately in that context, as well as being abused. It is almost a parallel sphere of operation. Those vehicles, however, regardless of whether they are subject to road traffic law as mechanically propelled vehicles on the road, will be subject to this legislation. Any form of vehicle, mechanically propelled or otherwise, being abused in these circumstances will be subject to these enforcement tools.

In addition, a group chaired by a representative from the Department of Justice is examining the wider mechanism of registration. That is because scrambler motorbikes being used as sports vehicles are not required to be registered now, in the same way as other sports equipment is not required to be registered. The owners of vehicles are registered in our vehicle database because their vehicles are used on the road. This situation goes back to 1921 when legislation regarding vehicles was first introduced. Scrambler motorbikes used for sports purposes are not road vehicles but sports equipment, albeit very powerful sports equipment. Therefore, the question arises as to how they will be regulated.

The current vehicle registration system is linked to the payment of vehicle registration tax, VRT. In turn, that is linked across to the type of approvals for road vehicles set at European Union level. It is the case, then, that these scrambler motorbikes are powerful sports equipment and not road vehicles. Therefore, they are not suitable for registration as road vehicles because they are not covered by VRT and there is now a need to look at a parallel system of registration which would cover these kinds of sports vehicles. The system will need to discourage the abuse of these vehicles while not discouraging their legitimate use for sporting purposes. A balance must be struck in this regard, therefore.