OPINION: E-scooters are eroding our right to feel safe in our streets – I’m calling for immediate action

'I’m calling for emergency and immediate action'

Scramblers and e-scooters aren’t just an antisocial behaviour issue in urban areas - they are behind a major public health crisis. Children under 16 are banned from using e-scooters, yet e-scooter accidents are the single biggest cause of major brain injury in children in Ireland.

Nearly half of the intensive care beds in Temple St Children’s Hospital are taken up by kids who have fallen off an e-scooter. Prof. Darach Crimmins, neurosurgeon at Temple St, describes this as “an epidemic” and makes the point that some of the children he’s caring for will never be the same again after the trauma they have endured.

There’s no simple fix to these problems - enforcement alone isn’t going to work, and neither will youth diversion alone. We need to do both, and pretending otherwise is why these problems persist for years on end.

The Garda Representative Association has called for better resourcing, specialised training and equipment, clearer legal powers, and the protections required to safely enforce the existing laws around scramblers and e-scooters. I support these calls - the frontline Gardaí doing the job on the ground know what they need to give these laws real impact to make our communities safer.

Most of the young people on these bikes aren’t hardened criminals - they’re kids and teenagers who’ve found something that gives them speed, freedom, and a sense of belonging they don’t find anywhere else. If we don’t offer something in its place, we’re just moving the problem around instead of solving it.

That’s why I’ve been just as vocal about investment in youth diversion - safe, supervised outlets for that same energy. That could mean proper motocross facilities, expanded youth work funding, or the kind of structured sport and activity programmes I’ve spent my own life involved in. I’ve seen firsthand what it does for a young person to have somewhere positive to put that energy.

That’s why, alongside the long-term work, I’m calling for emergency and immediate action: a dedicated Garda unit for this problem, with the powers, the specialised equipment, and the protections they need to enforce the law safely and effectively. Our Gardaí are being asked to police a problem they haven’t been properly resourced or protected to deal with, and that has to change now, not after another summer has passed.

We need enforcement that actually works, and we need investment that gives young people somewhere better to go. Not one or the other - both, together, and now. My community, adults and kids alike, have waited long enough.