First I want to speak about an event that happened last week on the other side of the Atlantic in a town called Freehold in New Jersey. Freehold, of course, is the home town of Bruce Springsteen. I am sure many Senators will remember me recalling here how Bruce Springsteen's great-great grandmother on his father's side, Ann Garrity, came from my home town of Rathangan in County Kildare and travelled to America in 1852. When she went, she brought a seedling of a copper beech with her which was planted and became a tree that is synonymous with Bruce Springsteen's music. Sadly that tree was cut down a number of years ago but last year a delegation from Freehold, including the mayor, Kevin Kane, and including Bruce's first cousin, Kevin, came to Rathangan and they planted a copper beech.

Last week, a delegation headed by the deputy mayor for the Kildare-Newbridge area, Councillor Brian O'Loughlin, went over and planted another copper beach tree in the same spot as the original tree. The event was fabulous and I look forward to hearing all about it. As part of what the community of Rathangan is doing will be the hosting of Féile Springsteen on 22 August, which will have a Springsteen tribute band called The Human Touch as well as a lot of other activities. Obviously, we hope to get the main man one of these years, which I have no doubt we will. The féile will be fantastic and well done to everyone involved.

Leader, I want to mention another issue. All of us will have been shocked to read a harrowing article this weekend on what clinicians at Temple Street have described as an epidemic. Professor Darach Crimmins, consultant neurosurgeon at Temple Street, said that e-scooters were now "the single biggest cause" of head trauma in children. In the last fortnight, six children have been admitted with traumatic brain injuries from e-scooters and four children remain on life support. That is shocking. This morning, I listened to Fr. Tom Little from Carlow who talked about officiating at a funeral of a 17-year-old in Carlow who died in an accident on an e-scooter.

There is no doubt about this. We have a law in place but we must support the Garda in enforcing this law. Garda representative bodies have called for greater enforcement powers and additional resources. We need a debate on this.

The last matter I want to mention is that of food waste. We are only at the halfway point of the year but the figures are already alarming. The anti-food waste platform Too Good To Go has revealed that Irish households have already wasted more than €645 million worth of food since January, with Kildare accounting for €28 million of that bill. Nationally, €3 million worth of food is wasted every single day and one third of all food we buy ends up in the bin. When we consider that food waste accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is not just a household issue. It is an environmental crisis. We have to ask everybody to think about what they buy, particularly in this warm weather. We also need to have a debate in this House on what practical steps we can take both collectively and individually to turn the tide.