Minister wants to see more legal protections for Gardaí when pursuing vehicles
By Bairbre Holmes, Press Association
The Minister for Justice has said he would like to see legislation passed to provide Gardaí greater protection when pursuing vehicles.
Jim O’Callaghan was speaking to the media following an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers in Dublin on Friday.
Asked about whether the Gardaí could be granted greater legal protections when pursuing e-scooters and e-bikes, O’Callaghan said: “I would like to see that type of legislation progressed.”
He said he had spoken to transport ministers Darragh O’Brien and Seán Canney about the issue and said, in the UK, police constables have “specific statutory protections” for when they are “in pursuit of somebody during the course of their work”.
“I would like to see something like that within the Irish legal system,” he added.
On Tuesday, Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly told an Oireachtas committee that pursuit training is currently limited to “very specialist units”.
He said there are plans to train more Garda members, but resourcing issues caused by Ireland’s EU presidency mean that will not happen until next year.
Kelly also said he was “really concerned” about Gardaí “on the front line” and said there are currently 10 before the courts for alleged dangerous driving or careless driving incidents which happened during the course of their duty.
Government leaders are due to meet on Monday to discuss e-scooters and O’Callaghan was asked if he supported an outright ban on the vehicles.
“I’m not going to preempt any discussion that’s going to take place on Monday,” he said, “There’s obviously a balancing act that needs to be weighed up here.”
“It is an ongoing discussion,” he added, “and I think you’ll be hearing more from government next week.”
On Wednesday, Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) released a report which said the number of children and young people being admitted with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) as a result of e-scooter accidents has risen by 50 per cent in a year and now accounts for a third of all TBI admissions.
O’Callaghan was asked whether he was happy with the enforcement of laws banning the use of e-scooters by under-16s.
He responded: “No matter what laws we have, no matter what level of enforcement we’re going to see, there are going to be examples of people breaking the law, no matter what the law is.”
What was “really worrying” about the CHI report, he said, was that “it’s clearly the case that people who have accidents on e-bikes are really exposed to very serious injuries, and that’s apparently happening at present. So, again, we need a broad response to this.”