Departmental Data
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

As the Deputy and I are in broad agreement on this issue, I will simply use this opportunity to reiterate the potential impact of an acquired brain injury on a child or a teenager. Acquiring a brain injury is a lifelong and potentially life-limiting condition. It can impact their ability to walk, to think, to speak, to eat. It is important that we say these things in the Dáil. The impact of an acquired brain injury can be devastating, not just for the individual but for everybody around them. To acquire a brain injury, whether as a rider, a pedestrian or any person, as a consequence of the misuse of these micro-mobility scooters, or whatever we want to call them, is such a tragedy and such a catastrophe.
The Deputy is right that we need data. That public health assessment that is being done between the deputy chief medical officer, who was a clinician in Temple Street and who is very well linked into the paediatric system, and the HSE is the sort of basis on which we need to take other steps in other Departments to try to regulate and restrict usage.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09