I ride an electric scooter round Dublin city centre most days, and lately it’s left me properly uneasy. Teenagers tearing along footpaths and cycle lanes on scooters far more powerful than the law allows, no helmets, no lights, no sense that anything could go wrong. I’ve taken to calling it blue sky scooter usage, riding like the sun will always be shining and the road will always be clear.
Six children have been admitted to intensive care at Temple Street with traumatic brain injuries in the past fortnight alone, four of them on life support. Doctors there are calling it an epidemic and want e-scooters banned outright. And I do get it. More than 400 children attended Children’s Health Ireland emergency departments with e-scooter injuries in 2025 alone, and Gardaí in Kilkenny have already written to local schools warning that any under 16 caught on one will have it seized with actions following with Tusla.
Here’s the thing though. Banning e-scooters outright won’t fix this, because Ireland already tried the do-nothing version of a ban and it’s exactly how we got here. So what actually needs to change? Enforcement, mostly, along with a couple of decisions successive governments have been too afraid to make. Let me explain why.
How Ireland’s e-scooter mess began
Back when Shane Ross was minister for transport, e-scooters sat in a legal grey area for years while he did nothing about it. The default stance was that electric scooters were mechanically propelled vehicles, uninsurable and thus by default illegal. As Ross stood by, the Irish market was flooded with electric scooters that met a transport demand the country failed to sort out.
His own government colleagues eventually turned on him over it, accusing him of treating the whole issue with total disdain. By the time the law actually caught up in 2024, the horse had bolted. The market was already flooded with scooters that met no regulation whatsoever, and the passive approach up to that point was essentially they’re illegal so no one should be using them. That was never going to work, and it didn’t.
Why the e-scooter speed limit is part of the problem
Here’s a direct answer before I get into the personal stuff. The 20km/h cap on legal e-scooters is a big part of why so many riders go looking for something faster, not because they’re all speed demons but because 20km/h genuinely isn’t quick enough to compete with the alternatives.
I have a dog in this fight. My own scooter meets every legal requirement. It’s capped at 20km/h, rated at 400 watts, and weighs nowhere near the 25kg limit. And I get overtaken constantly. Elderly riders on ebikes cruise past me without breaking a sweat. Regular cyclists on Dublin Bikes leave me for dust. That’s because ebikes get a 25km/h limit and pedal bikes have no cap at all, so my perfectly legal scooter ends up the slowest thing in the cycle lane. I’m actually about to swap my commute over to an ebike for exactly that reason, alongside the comfort.
But surely, the slowest of all the vehicles being ridden within the rules shouldn’t be facing an outright ban? I don’t want to over simplify here but I’ve never seen a call for an outright ban on cars despite skyrocketing road fatalities every year.
My unpopular opinion is that the legal limit should move to 25km/h to match ebikes, not to please anyone chasing speed but to remove the reason people go shopping for something illegal in the first place. It’s unpopular to say, and surely unpopular for anyone in goverment to back. But a radical overhaul of the electric scooter landscape is needed.
The loophole letting illegal e-scooters onto the road
Here’s the second direct answer. Shops can legally sell you a scooter capable of far more than the law allows, as long as it’s marketed for private usage on private property, and once it’s sitting in someone’s shed there’s nothing stopping it turning up on a public road the next morning. I’ve no doubt they are not the exact conversations happening on the shop floor. Where you use it will likely never come up versus commute distance.
I reached out to the Garda Press Office for comment on seizure figures and how they’re engaging with riders, and I’m still waiting to hear back. In the meantime, the Department of Justice’s own numbers tell a decent chunk of the story. Gardaí seized 817 e-scooters in 2025 alone, a jump of 150 per cent on the year before, with a further 352 seized in just the first two months of 2026. Nearly 1,700 fixed charge notices have gone out since the law came into force. I’ve seen mobile Garda speed dynos out testing riders directly too, but the streets are still awash with scooters that will comfortably do 60km/h or more.
My lived observation is that it’s often commuters who’ve purchased a high powered scooter with little knowledge of the law that ends up being in the statisics for seizures. Not the teens who have the cheek to run away from Gardai.
The excuse I keep hearing is that these overpowered scooters are all being bought by farmers for use on private land. I’ve heard that said with a straight face more than once, and it doesn’t stack up. Supply needs to be tightened at the point of sale, because you can’t enforce your way out of a market that’s flooded with machines the law was never meant to allow.
What real e-scooter enforcement actually needs
Fair play to Gardai in Kilkenny as it’s one of the few places doing something concrete. Gardaí there have already written to local schools warning parents that under 16s caught on an e-scooter will have it seized. They recently seized an e-scooter from a child under 16 riding it in public, and confirmed the child will receive a Juvenile Liaison Officer caution while Tusla contacts the parents directly.
That’s a start, but Gardaí also need the training and legal tools to safely stop something moving on two wheels, and right now that’s genuinely difficult.
There’s a political will problem sitting underneath all of this too. TDs were told at an Oireachtas committee earlier this year that the Government is moving in the wrong direction on road safety reform, even as ministers publicly discuss tightening the rules. If licensing helps close that gap, I’m in favour of it. An ID number linked to an individual owner, similar to how cars work, so that if a scooter is involved in a collision or ridden dangerously, someone can actually be traced and held to account. Right now it’s largely lawless, and that has to change.
Helmets, education and getting e-scooter safety right
Parents and riders both need proper education here. Some of these machines are more powerful than a Vespa, and treating them like toys is exactly how children end up on ones they were never meant to be near.
The Government has been weighing up mandatory helmets and high visibility gear since earlier this year, and I understand the instinct, but blanket mandatory helmet laws elsewhere have a track record of pushing people off two wheels altogether rather than making them safer, so I would rather see it done properly than done fast. That said, I believe helmets should be worn. If people are going to wear a helmet, it needs to be rated for the speeds e-scooters can actually reach, not just whatever was lying around the house. I’m upgrading my own gear for exactly that reason.
The Goosed verdict
My personal opinion is that the Government has a broad legacy of inaction as policy. It’s the safest thing to do to ensure the polls don’t swing. And it has to stop, but with some logic.
An outright ban would punish the riders who bought a legal, compliant scooter to get to work and did everything right, while doing very little to touch the overpowered machines already sitting in people’s sheds.
Fix the speed limit so it isn’t slower than a bicycle, close the loophole that lets shops sell scooters the law doesn’t allow, give Gardaí the tools and backing to enforce what already exists, and educate riders and parents properly. Do that, and Ireland might finally get an e-scooter policy that matches how people actually use them. You can check whether your own scooter is legal on the RSA’s official e-scooter page, and it’s worth doing before you’re the one being stopped.
What I can guarentee you is that doing nothing, has not worked in the past and surprisingly won’t do anything going forward.
Disclaimer: The featured image for this article was created using AI.
