Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will therefore deliver my speech quickly. In the main, I am very supportive of this and have been so at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. We have heard of worst-case scenarios and there are many of them. When one goes online, one will see videos of people going crazy on e-scooters. That is the worst-case scenario but I have also seen youngsters using e-scooters to go to hurling training and visiting friend’s houses and they are giving the mum and dad taxi a break. In the main, this can be only a positive and good thing. We need to regulate and embrace the fact that it is happening all over the country. It is being used as a new form of micro-transport.

Largely, the legislation is very good and much thought has gone into it. We have been doing pre-legislative scrutiny at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. Some things still need to stitched into this Bill before it is enacted.

First, e-scooters should not be on footpaths. They should not be interfacing with pedestrians on footpaths and there is a need for the fitting of a slight noise emitting device. Some EU countries have these. One will hear a faint little bleep as the vehicle approaches. That would mean those who are visually impaired will know there is an e-scooter nearby and they will step back or stop where they are walking, knowing that one is about to pass them. That is very important and other countries have had the foresight to introduce this and we should do likewise.

There also needs to be designated parking areas, particularly if one is discussing shared scooters to which Deputy Lahart referred. One needs to be very definite as to where these scooters can be parked.

I am concerned that helmets will not be mandatory and I am particularly concerned because we are now seeing the second and third generation of e-scooters. They are getting faster and stronger and are far more powerful than the predecessors, the first generation. I will give an example. I have been looking at this online and the Dualtron Ultra II is one of the highest spec e-scooters one can currently buy. It has a top speed of 100 km/h. It is powered by two motors with a collective power of 6,640 W. That is very significant. If that e-scooter is travelling at top speed, and granny or grandad is coming down the footpath towards it, all interfacing on the same pavement space, that is a recipe for disaster. They need to be on the road or ideally on a cycleway or off the path used by pedestrians.

It concerns me that there will not be a requirement to have insurance, which certainly appears to be the intent now. If a scooter is involved in a road traffic accident involving a car, a pedestrian, a motorcyclist or a cyclist, the insurance industry, as we all know, will try to shift the blame of liability across to others. In the middle of it all is the child, the teenager or the adult on the e-scooter who has no liability because he or she simply does not have insurance cover. Who does one go to in that case? I pay €10 a month insurance on my phone. Surely some low-level insurance can be considered here. Most teenagers insure their expensive devices and see value in that. An e-scooter, where one is shelling out €1,000 or €1,500, surely should have an insurance policy on it for theft and, most importantly, against third-party injury.

I will conclude by saying that I love e-scooters. I have tried them out and I think they are fantastic. Quad bikes, which are a little outside what we are debating here, belong on farms and in rural environments. They do not belong even on every farm. Where I live in Meelick in County Clare there are a lot of hills and a quad bike would not be any use there because it would overturn or capsize.

Similarly, scrambler bikes are for forestry terrain. They are a sports vehicle and do not belong in housing estate green areas being driven around like the wild west on a weekend night. We must clamp down on that and these vehicles should be seized and destroyed. There is a facility within this law to do all of that.

In the main, this is positive but we need to regulate and we are a little light in some of the regulations so far.

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