The Minister for Health has pleaded with parents to stop their children using e-scooters, after a number were hospitalised with serious brain injuries. 

Since 2024, no one under the age of 16 can use an e-scooter and all users must obey a 20km/ph speed limit. 

However, during one recent fortnight, six children were put on life support in Temple Street because of e-scooter accidents. 

On The Claire Byrne Show, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said families need to make sure their children are aware of the dangers of e-scooters. 

“It's illegal, obviously, for children to be on e-scooters,” she said. 

“The reason for that, of course, is the sheer danger that they pose to a child.” 

An e-scooter user. Picture by: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie.

The Minister for Health added that many children seem completely unaware of the risk they are taking when they ride an e-scooter. 

“An acquired brain injury has life limiting implications,” she explained. 

“Potentially the ability to feed oneself, the ability to walk, talk, to have a normal life - it is so potentially severely compromised. 

“I have visited acquired brain injury treatment centers, I have seen what can happen through accidents and these things can happen all the way through life. 

“But to put a child at risk of that scale of injury is very significant.” 

Minister Carroll MacNeill continued that “nobody is scaremongering” about the impact of e-scooters and that the Department of Health is collating data on the phenomenon. 

“I do note that there's been a number of them happening in summer when kids are out and about a bit more,” she said. 

“I've spoken to my colleagues in the Department of Transport, Seán Canney, Minister for Road Safety, is very, very concerned about this.” 

The Dún Laoghaire TD said that while Gardaí have an important role to play in the enforcement of age restrictions, she added that it is “also for all of us, as parents” to stop children using e-scooters. 

“I think a big part of it is a broad societal understanding of how dangerous they can be and what it looks like to have a child with an acquired brain injury in intensive care in Temple Street,” she said. 

“If even that message could get through today, that somebody making a decision to buy one or to let a child use it - please just don't.”

Main image: Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie.