Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if any of the witnesses got the chance to see the previous session so I will not labour the points that were made then. We teased out a lot of them. There is a lot of unanimity, it seems, among the operators on geofencing, not riding on footpaths, power limits, speed limits and so on. I can see that this is a fast-moving technology that is being constantly upgraded. I assume there is, if not a kind of EC mark-type product rating in the same way there is for toys and electrical goods, something for scooters, not that they would all necessarily be to the standard of the companies represented by the witnesses. I would have thought, however, that something involving batteries, power and so on would have some basic electrical and CE-type mark. I do not know that. We should find that out. I am not saying many scooters are well below the standard of the witnesses' robust machines that get many hours' and days' use by many different users, but I would be very worried if that were the case and if private companies and supermarkets could just sell anything with no regulation.

I am interested in some things we have not talked about so much. There is the technological argument as to whether there should be a kind of black box recorder inside scooters that records information on what people are doing all the time and sends it up into the cloud. There is the issue of insurance. We are talking about hire schemes versus private use. The latter sounds like it will be the harder to regulate because the witnesses' companies have users, they are registered, the companies can see what they are doing, the technology will probably be of a higher spec and so on. Should people need licences and insurance? Is there a need for a kind of black box recorder? How can we stop the people riding scooters while intoxicated? Can alcohol be detected through people's pores? Should riders have to wear special gloves or breathe into something before they start riding their scooters? These are not the biggest issues in the world, but maybe e-scooter schemes just do not work between the more high-risk times of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. I do not know.

The witnesses are the guys and ladies all the expertise here. In cities, what has worked best and what has worked really badly? The witnesses will all tell me there has never been a problem anywhere, but clearly there have been problems. As previous speakers have said, we are coming to this a little later than some places. What has worked particularly badly but has been resolved? What has worked well? What should we watch out for? The one question I do not think anybody has asked is this: typically, what is the optimal number of operators in an environment? Should it be two or ten? The witnesses will all say that if they get the contract, they would want it to be just them, but would it be better if there were four, six, eight or ten companies operating? I presume they are not interchangeable. Maybe some of them will buy one another up. We have heard from representatives of nine different schemes. Everybody seems very professional. Everybody seems excellent. That is all to their credit. However, I am not sure the four Dublin authorities or Limerick City and County Council will offer nine operators the opportunity to compete with one another. What are the witnesses' thoughts on that? Those questions are to any and all of the witnesses.