Shane Moynihan

And that's before you even get to the fact that they're used as support and as supply lines for all sorts of various types of criminality.

Well, I think one thing we've seen in my area in particular, we've got a new running club, new running clubs that have been set up.

There's a football club that now, one of the fastest growing football clubs in Dublin, which has occupied one of our main parks here.

So that ensures that they then own that space, the streets around areas like Norton Dockland and so on.

Northland Dock and Running Club have played a really strong role in making sure that they, so we use these streets for recreation.

These are a public space.

And I think, you know, oftentimes when we're talking about scramblers, we talk about the enforcement piece and that's why we talk about it.

But it's also empowering people to make sure that clubs and communities are supported in their own recreational activities to make sure that they reclaim the streets for themselves and that they won't be intimidated out.

by antisocial behaviour on scramblers too.

So certainly I want to pay tribute to my colleagues, Paul McAuliffe and John Laird, who have been a really strong voice on this for many, many years.

But I think for me, the kind of the piece where the rubber needs hit the road is ensuring that Gardaí feel confident that they'll be backed and that they feel supported in if they need to do pursuit and if they do need to engage with someone driving a scrambler.

That being said, under Operation Mac, and as I mentioned earlier on, hundreds of illegal scramblers and e-scooters have been seized by Angora na Síochána, preventing their use

for dangerous activity.

And, you know, there's much more of a focus on making sure that they're seized and taken out of circulation.

But I think to the family in a park or the people walking down a road, when they see someone on a scrambler that is causing antisocial behaviour or is intimidating them, they want to feel confident and the Gardaí want to feel confident that they're backed in pursuing them and, if they have to, performing a tactical intervention.

I think, first of all, I think the message should be very clear that regulations are now in place.

The Gardaí need to be very clear about what formal requests they want to make for training equipment and the resources that their members need to be backed.

And the message needs to be very clear from government, in my view, that when Gardaí are doing their job and enforcing the law, they not only should be trained and equipped, but they should be backed to do that.

Of course, we need oversight, but we should have Gardaí who are making split-second decisions about whether or not to pursue someone on a dangerous vehicle

that they should feel confident that they will be backed in doing that and that the liability for someone committing an offence should sit with the offender.