Ms Jessica Hall:

I thank the Chair and the committee for facilitating this discussion today. I am head of operations for Ireland at TIER Mobility. TIER is Europe's largest e-scooter operator, with live operations in over 180 cities, including operating Ireland’s first live electric scooter trial at Dublin City University, DCU.

My role at TIER is all about operations and how a successful e-scooter scheme is designed, devised and implemented. I have overseen the launch of e-bikes and e-scooters in York and London, and more recently our trial on the DCU campus, which has been operational for about nine months.

As head of operations, I come to the committee today grounded in the knowledge of how a successful e-scooter scheme works from an operational perspective. I know first-hand how to put in place the safest possible e-scooter operation in a practical way and how important partnerships like our Ireland safety board are to the success of any e-scooter scheme.

TIER watched the committee's previous hearing with interest, when we saw representatives of some great organisations speak with real knowledge and insight about their concerns with the current legislation, and the difficulties that e-scooters can pose if not managed correctly. We welcome such thoughtful scrutiny and the work of the Chair and the committee in highlighting these challenges. We also welcome the prospect of working together to solve these challenges. It is this drive to face such challenges that led us to partner with two organisations that have appeared before the committee previously, namely, the Irish Wheelchair Association and the NCBI. They sit on our Ireland safety board, along with the Disability Federation of Ireland, Walk21 and Age Friendly Ireland.

This safety board has been in place since the beginning of 2021 and has met six times in substantive sessions organised around themes to discuss very real challenges posed by electric scooters in an Irish context. Like the witnesses at the previous meeting, I have seen what bad e-scooter regulatory frameworks look like, and specifically cities where there is little shape on an e-scooter scheme or where unlimited operators were allowed to operate. Such schemes are chaotic, messy and overly competitive and ultimately damage the image of e-scooters for everybody. That is not the type of thing we want. We do not want e-scooters without adequate regulation and instead we want to introduce services to Ireland, provided we can do so in a safe and sustainable way, learning the lessons from these hearings, from our own safety board hearings and from other cities.

Ireland is in an advantageous position and there is potentially a second mover advantage here. This country can now see what good e-scooter schemes look like in many jurisdictions and can also see what bad practice looks like. Ireland can ultimately very much shape a safe, sustainable scheme that works for everybody in the community. Ultimately, we want Ireland to have the safest e-scooter schemes in the world from day one.

I am responsible for the operation of our live trial on the DCU campus and I am proud of our results and progress to date. We have had e-scooters operational for more than nine months now, maintaining high levels of parking compliance thanks to our camera positioning system solution, which ensures centimetre-level accuracy on parking. This means scooters stay in tightly-defined parking bays and do not pose a hazard to anyone on the campus. We have also had a 100% safety record at the university and we feel that things like our foldable helmets being included with each journey is part of the reason for this. Most of all, we feel our DCU trial and our Ireland safety board demonstrate a real commitment to Ireland, and it is one that we are keen to solidify in the years ahead with a commitment to safety always being at the core of what we do.

Once again, I thank the Chair and committee. I look forward to the questions.