John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I congratulate the Minister and his officials. I brought forward a Bill during the previous Dáil regarding the issue of the antisocial use of scramblers, and my party colleague, Deputy McAuliffe, and I introduced a stand-alone Bill on that issue way back when the Dáil was sitting in the convention centre. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that was during this Dáil term. The issue has been a source of great frustration to communities, so it is very welcome it is being dealt with here and that the provisions will come to pass quickly. I welcome also a number of the other measures and look forward, having pushed for them, to the implementation of those measures relating to the M50 and gantries, which are most welcome.

The Minister knows my view on e-scooters but I might reiterate it for the record. Although I support the Bill, I think we have made a mistake here and I hope we will not rue the day. We ought to have introduced e-scooters by way of the public scheme, as was done in the UK. The bulk of e-scooter accidents in the UK relate to private e-scooters, given the size, shape, speed and safety fit of them all simply cannot be monitored. As someone who has been very engaged in this space over the past three years, I have witnessed an enormous improvement in the build quality of the public offering of rental e-scooter equipment. The reservations people have had have been taken on board and there have been considerable improvements to the vehicles. In the meantime, illegal e-scooters have been on our roads and motorways.

People want e-scooters, but the public scheme would have been the best way to introduce them to bed them in, preferably during Covid, as was done in the UK as a filler-in for public transport because of the social distancing rules that applied. They are a small but key part of the jigsaw of public transport and they are exciting, but I do not how we are going to regulate or police the privately owned ones. In the case of public ones, we can govern the speed, geofence them and regulate where they can or cannot go and where they can or cannot be parked. I fear we are going to end up with a lot of e-scooter litter on our streets, that they are going to cause accidents and that people are going to become sick and tired of them before long.

That said, the rest of the Bill and all the measures constitute monumental work. It is a huge piece of spring-cleaning in traffic legislation and for that, the Minister needs to be strongly commended, as do the efforts of his officials, on bringing forward and getting agreement on such colossal legislation.

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