Debate contribution: Antisocial Scrambler and e-Scooter Use

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 21 April 2026.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

21 April 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Antisocial Scrambler and e-Scooter Use

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5497935

Read the official Assembly record

Text

If you speak to people about e-scooters and scramblers, you will get a pretty strong response, as has been said, from constituents and people across the North. I echo the tributes paid to Valerie Armstrong by my colleague from West Belfast. It is hard to believe that it is 10 years since she was killed in Colin Glen Forest Park, where I previously worked. That shows that those vehicles can be dangerous. They were fatal for Valerie, so I want to remember her, as others have done, and pay tribute to her family. In a general sense, I appeal to people — not just young people — not to engage in the ripping up of parks and public green spaces, particularly when using scramblers and any other vehicles. I would hazard a guess and say that it is not only young people who are doing that. Like the Member for North Belfast, I met the Belfast Hills Partnership some months ago — I think that it was in the summer — on the issue. While we do not necessarily agree on the solutions to the crisis, there is unanimity on the fact that people using scramblers and such vehicles to go on to green spaces and cut or chop them up and obviously destroy habitats is an issue. We should appeal to people to not engage in that: stop doing that; it is disruptive behaviour. However, we should also be cognisant of the fact that industrial dumping and pollution ruins green spaces and ecosystems as well because of the harmful items placed in waters primarily by industrial farming. This may be the more difficult part to grapple with: why are so many people — according to the statistics, it is primarily young people but not just them — attracted by those vehicles? I am generally not interested in cars or fast vehicles — I started to drive only two years ago — but I imagine that, for young people, it is the thrill of travelling fast. They often live alienated lives over which they have no control or say, and a vehicle going at 50 mph or whatever the Member said, dangerous as that is, can feel liberating or like a good thing to people, obviously with huge risks to them. In some cases, people can literally feel heard: some of those machines can be quite loud. People have also raised that with me in the constituency. We will have to try to understand why young people engage in the practice and encourage them to do it safely and not in a way that puts themselves and others at risk. I missed the start of the debate, but there was a clear demand for managed sites — it has been referenced already — so that people can use the vehicles in a safe and controlled way. I appreciate that the AERA Minister is standing in, but we need to hear from the Justice Minister or even the AERA Minister about any work that is being progressed around safe sites.

Generally, I warn against a policing-led response to this. The response from young people to that will be that that is needed like a hole in the head. We need to have a youth-led response that actually talks to young people and engages with them. As a youth worker in a pervious job, I know that people respond to that better than when a stick used against them. It is much easier to take the approach of blaming young people and parents, but it is more appropriate and more difficult in this political climate to find the funding to invest in young people more generally, including in youth centres, which are being cut back, and in summer schemes, which are not being protected, to give young people a bit of hope and to listen to them about their needs, their wishes and what they are interested in. In conclusion, it is worth saying that young people are already subject to stop-and-search on a huge level by the police. They are subject to spit hoods as well, and I do not think that we should be adding to that carte blanche. Obviously, if someone has committed serious injury or a serious crime, that speaks for itself, but, in a general sense, adopting that approach is quite mistaken. Of course, those vehicles are not risk-free, as I have outlined, but the elephant in the room in the debate, when we talk about risk to life and risk to people, is cars. How many people every single year do cars knock down and kill? Most of us in the Building use one, so I think that we need to focus on that as well —

— and not demonise our young people.

798 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:26 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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