For the last few months, in this House and at the transport committee, I have been raising the need for increased regulation and enforcement in the area of e-scooters. I welcome the statement this week by the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, that he will look at registration and insurance requirements. These are things that need to happen. We heard from the Road Safety Authority, RSA, in the Oireachtas joint committee this morning that it believes the structures exist to roll that out efficiently. Safety is also something that I have raised on the floor of the House with regard to high visibility and helmet use by those operating e-scooters, and educating parents that minors should not be operating them. The third piece in this puzzle is gardaí feeling they have the support to make tactical interventions to prevent e-scooters from continuing, and to be able to intervene and confiscate an e-scooter that is being used illegally and unsafely. A very clear signal needs to be sent to them that they are able to do that.

I thank the Taoiseach for his support on this so far. Will he support that call for additional support for An Garda Síochána and roll out the registration and insurance requirements that are central to dealing with the scourge of e-scooters on our streets at the moment?

I think we need to stand back and have a fundamental review of e-scooters more generally, given the level of injuries that have been reported by medical consultants. That needs to be examined in more detail in light of the statements they have issued recently. That level of brain injury among children suggests society has to really stand back and review the entire role of e-scooters, to be frank. It is unacceptable that there would be those numbers. I am informed that gardaí have significant legislative powers to combat the antisocial and dangerous use of e-scooters. The Garda authorities report 754 incidents in which an e-scooter has been seized in the first quarter of this year, compared with a full-year figure of 931 for 2025. Therefore, from what I am being told, there has been a higher number of seizures of e-scooters, which indicates perhaps the bad use of e-scooters in given locations. On the Deputy’s call for regulation, the answer is “Yes.”