Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to speak in support of this legislation. It is very positive. I was someone who up to ten months ago took off every day from Clare in my diesel Honda car and drove to the gates of Dáil Éireann but in recent months I have embraced multimodal transport. This morning I took the car to the train station, from which I took the train to Heuston Station and then I took a bike. I have seen some unusual behaviour as I have pedalled along the quays. On one occasion I met our colleague, Deputy Jim O’Callaghan, who was pranking me as I cycled along. I was trying to ignore this person who was shouting me down as I pedalled but it turned out to be a Dáil colleague. Another day I saw a guy pass me out on an e-scooter. They have a speed advantage on the cyclist. As he got close to Bachelors Walk and was stopped by a red light he took out his Lynx deodorant and started to spray himself. He was obviously going to work. We have seen women apply make-up with the aid of the car mirror in the car as they are held up at traffic lights but this was a new one for me.

E-scooters have become very much part of life. The first time we saw them in recent years we craned our necks to check them out but now they can be seen everywhere. A fabulous aspect of them is that they have given youngsters a degree of independence from the parents, be it to go to hurling training, meet their friends at the cinema or do what they whatever they do when they hang out with their own age cohort. It gives them some independence. It gives the taxi service provided by mum and dad a little break. This trend took off overnight. They can be seen not only along Bachelors Walk but throughout the countryside but there is a need for regulation.

We have been doing considerable work on this at the Oireachtas transport committee and Minister of State has engaged in that. There is much in the legislation that is very positive but other elements still need to be stitched into it. Earlier today I met representatives of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland and they advised there are a few omissions they would love to see included in the Bill. They consider it is generally very positive but believe footpaths must be a no-go area for e-scooters. If a person is walking on a footpath, regardless of their age, mobility or disability, it should be free for them to walk on it without having to dodge scooters coming left, right and centre. Another suggestion they made, which was new to me, is that in other EU countries a noise-emitting device is attached to scooters. It is a low-level beeping sound such that a pedestrian would know when one is passing them. Perhaps something similar could be considered for electric vehicles. They are upon pedestrians before they know they are there. In one sense that is great as they have reduced noise levels on many of our roads but there is no forewarning as the vehicle approaches the pedestrian.

Another issue is the designation of parking spaces for e-scooters. I was in London two weeks ago where e-scooters are very much part of the public domain. I came out a tube station and saw eight or ten public e-scooters – they are like DublinBikes where they can be hired for a few minutes to complete a journey – were parked willy-nilly and people would trip over them as they come out of a Tube station. We certainly do not want that replicated in Ireland when we get to legislate for e-scooters. We need to have designated areas where they can be safely deposited.

There also needs to be a degree of future-proofing. I am a child of the 1980s. I do not want to guess what decade some of the other Members present are from. I grew up watching “Back to the Future” and Marty McFly and his hoverboard, never believing anything like that would be possible. Now we have e-scooters, takeaways being delivered by drones in some countries and children going around on hoverboards, although I am not sure how they work. We need to future-proof this legislation to ensure it caters for the next fad that comes along and that we will not be back here in two or three years’ time legislating for the next such item that comes down the line.

I acknowledge the presence of my colleague, Deputy McAuliffe. He has led the campaign to fight back against the improper use of scrambler and quad bikes. I come from a rural constituency. Quad bikes belong on farms. They would used by farmers, for example, when they are putting down electric fences to keep their sheep penned in. They do not belong in the green areas of housing estates where people use them as if they were in the wild west and do all sorts of stunts on them. They are dangerous. Many farmers have opted not to use them. Suddenly 14-year-olds are thinking this is the Wild West and that quad bikes are their horse and they can take them wherever they want. It is welcome that we are moving along towards the legislative route to regulate those also.

E-bikes are referenced in the legislation. I use DublinBikes every day. I love that mode of transport. It is fantastic that I do not have to carry a bike from County Clare around Dublin all day. It is a great facility to be able to take a bike journey, park the bike in a designated zone and then be free to walk to where one needs to go. The little e-battery that is on them has not worked for many months. It has been recalled for the whole fleet of bikes. I do not expect the Minister of State to have her hand in every area of the transport brief but it would be no harm if her officials prompted DublinBikes to move that on. It is a key component of multimodal transport in Dublin.

Road legislation also encompasses many other forms of transport. One of them is sulky cart racing, which drives me bonkers. I am sure it happens in every constituency. It is regulated under section 74 of the Roads Act 1993. It allows for people to seek a permit from the Garda Síochána to stage a road race of sulky carts. I have spoken to members of the Garda about this. I do not know when anyone ever sought a permit to stage a road race of sulk carts. People can stand up and the politically correct brigade can tell us it is part of someone's culture to have a horse. It was part of everyone's culture to have a horse at one time. My great-grandparents had horses and they fed them oats and grazed them in the field. We do not have horses, land or long acre grazing. There are horses in many housing estates tethered to a rope and allowed to graze. People think they can ride them bareback or use them to draw a sulky cart. That culture does not exist. Anyone who says it does is telling lies. We need to clamp down on that. There is no God-given right to ride a horse through a housing estate or on a dual carriageway. That is happening every week. Legislation allows it happen currently without any great oversight.

The squaring of traffic fines comes under the Road Traffic Act and legislation. This has been an element of road policing for time immemorial. Gardaí leaving Templemore training college are told they are empowered by the Road Traffic Act to have a degree of discretion when they meet somebody on the road. It could be a person going to a maternity hospital or a person on their way to a hospice to meet someone who is in their final hours of living. They might be driving a little over the speed limit. We have all been there. We have all driven faster than we should have at times. The moment a garda turns on the blue beacon on the Garda car and pulls a motorist over, he or she has the power of discretion but recently there has been something of a witch hunt in the Limerick Garda division. If a garda squares off a fine he or she is under a net investigation. The Government needs to examine that and say that enough is enough in that regard.

I thank the Minister of State for all her interventions this week regarding Doolin Coast Guard and everything she has done for County Clare. That mediation process, to which she is committed, needs to begin in earnest. Much of what we do in the Dáil or in committee can be inconsequential to people's lives. The closure of a Coast Guard base, however, is fully consequential. Lives will be lost if we do not have a Coast Guard presence on the west coast of Clare. I am glad the Minister of State is intervening. Expediency is the name of the game here over the next few days.

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