Mr. Will O'Brien:

The question of managing the relationship between electric scooters and pedestrians is absolutely critical. To simplify the matter, there is the proactive and reactive approach, and we need a bit of both. We need to be preventative in the first instance in order to stop collisions and such incidents happening and then afterwards we must be prescriptive and react, making changes that seem to fit.

On the question of preventing incidents in the first place, technology is coming on in the industry in leaps and bounds. The scooters we have this year are very different from those we had last year. Every operator in this industry is committed to reducing collisions. This can happen through technology in a number of ways and GPS is going to be the main tool by using targeted geofencing and getting it really accurate. All operators are working on that. It is about working for quite a considerable number of weeks ahead of a launch so we can find the right places in Cork city that can be geofenced in order to prevent collisions. That will be critical. Much of that will be on the operator side and happen at a local authority operator level.

On the cost side of things, it will again likely happen at a local authority level between local authorities and the operators they select. It may be part of procurement to ask operators what their pricing model will be, and that is something we saw in the UK, which favoured operators coming in at lower prices. It is one option.