After spending four months in the safety of our homes, now is the time to reunite with friends and family and begin to rebuild our daily routines.With the excitement of the new normal, can come anxiety and anticipation as we leave the comfort of our safety bubble, our home. With a burglary taking place every 31 minutes in Ireland, PhoneWatch, Ireland’s leading provider of monitored home safety systems, wants to share some simple tips that will ensure you feel confident and comfortable transitioning into the new way of living. We are also reviewing some home security with more on the way so stay tuned for our reviews and what is on offer out there today and also check what we have covered already.
Created by PhoneWatch experts, the summer security tips are designed to ensure our homes stay safe this season.
Check your windows and doors: When are home all day, we are often less conscious of windows being open. Be sure to close and lock all windows when you leave the house, or even if you are in the garden
Secure your outdoor valuables: Make sure garden equipment or bicycles are secured in a shed or garage, and kept out of sight where possible
Close gates: Make a habit of closing gates, especially those leading to the rear of the home
Maintain your garden: Cut the grass before you go away, overgrown grass can make a house look empty. Also, prune trees and shrubs that may grow more quickly in the summer for clearer views, large bushes can act as cover for anyone who may be watching a home
Don’t advertise your trips on social media: Keep those photos of your days out and staycations until you return home
Leave a light on: Timer switches for lamps can provide a cost-effective way to keep your home looking occupied if you are gone over night
Arm your alarm: If your home is equipped with an alarm, be sure and use it. Research shows that an alarm is one of the most effective ways to keep your home safe
When going away, nominate a next-doorneighbour: An important tip for keeping your home safe is “maintaining an appearance” that your home is occupied. A neighbour or family member can help you keep your house look occupied by keeping post or deliveries clear from the letter box, parking a car in the driveway for a few hours, puttingthe bins out and taking them in on the same day and acting as the nominated key holder to your monitored alarm provider
Eoin Dunne, Managing Director of PhoneWatch said:At PhoneWatch, our mission is to make people feel safe and secure in their homes. More than ever, the past few months havemade us all realise the importance of a safe home. The good news is, by taking simple precautions as we begin to venture outside of our homes again, we can ensure that they will be considerably safer when we return.
Protect the things and people you cherish most with a monitored home alarm from PhoneWatch. Total peace of mind with instant response to your burglar and smoke alarms 24 hours a day.Discover how PhoneWatch can help by visiting www.phonewatch.ie
House of Marley today announces the launch of the redesigned Smile Jamaica Wireless 2 in-ear headphones, a stylized refinement to the timeless classic at a new lower price with sustainability improvements in both the cable and packaging. The product release includes the debut of House of Marley’s new 100% recyclable plastic-free packaging constructed entirely from paper fibres.
The Smile Jamaica Wireless 2 feature a fresh and tailored redesign of the best-selling everyday in-ear headphones, but with familiar eco-conscious materials. As with the original model, the FSC™ certified wood and recyclable aluminium housings in the earbuds deliver not only an earthy, stylish look but a warm, acoustic component to the signature Marley sound performance.
The new braided cable used in the Smile Jamaica Wireless 2 is designed using fibres from 99% post-consumer plastic waste from recycled water bottles, bringing sustainable elements to durable construction. As the leader in eco-conscious audio products while contributing to environmental give-back, House of Marley has also expanded their innovative design to address the need for a simpler, fully-recyclable packaging for consumer electronics.
“It was important for us to make it easier for the consumer to make a conscious decision toward recycling the packaging and one that did not compromise our commitment to sustainable design,” explains House of Marley Director of Product Development Josh Poulsen. “Our packaging has always positioned us to stand out within the consumer electronics industry as we have made a conscious effort to use FSC™ certified materials, recycled paper, recycled PET casing and paper fibre ties instead of the plastic standard. Our move to 100% paper fibre packaging means that the entire package contents can now be put into the single mixed-paper recycle bin without a hassle to separate inserts of different materials, a common issue when it comes to the recycling process.”
In addition to 100% recyclable packaging, House of Marley is continuing their support for environmental give-back, celebrating their 10th Anniversary as an eco-conscious audio maker and honouring the legendary Bob Marley and his respect for the earth and people. The Project Marley Global Giving Initiative has expanded to support global reforestation through One Tree Planted and ocean preservation through the Surfrider Foundation.
Coming out just in time for summer, the Smile Jamaica Wireless 2 is a reinvention of the original Smile Jamaica Wireless, following in the tradition of timeless design using FSC™ certified wood and recyclable aluminium housings. Delivering a seamless wireless experience with extended playtime and all-day comfort, the Smile Jamaica Wireless 2 features a sleeker, lighter neckband design than its predecessor at a more affordable price within the under £30 category. Constructed for stability and convenience, the new tangle free cable made from 99% post-consumer recycled polyester and earbud construction provide strain relief with the simplicity of a single, inline 3 button control, all within a sustainably-minded design.
PRODUCT FEATURES
Materials:FSC certified wood and recyclable aluminium
9-hour battery life with USB-C quick charge technology (15 minutes = 2 hours playtime)
IPX4 rating for sweat-proof and weather-resistant design.
Microphone with 3-button control offers remote functionality for calls and music
Tangle-resistant, durable braided cable made of 99% post-consumer plastic fibres.
Bluetooth® 5.0
Two size ear gels (S, M)
Available in three colourways; Copper, Signature Black and Rasta
SKU: EM-JE113
RRP: £29.99
Smile Jamaica Wireless 2 are available now on www.thehouseofmarley.co.uk, Amazon, HMV and select retailers nationwide.
Today, Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company announced the general availability of Amazon CodeGuru, a developer tool powered by machine learning that provides intelligent recommendations for improving code quality and identifying an application’s most expensive lines of code. Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer helps improve code quality by scanning for critical issues, identifying bugs, and recommending how to remediate them.
Amazon CodeGuru Profiler helps developers find an application’s most expensive lines of code along with specific visualizations and recommendations on how to improve code to save money. Amazon CodeGuru can be enabled with a few clicks in the AWS console, customers only pay for their actual use of Amazon CodeGuru, and it’s easy and affordable enough to run on every code review and application in an organization. To get started with Amazon CodeGuru, visit http://aws.amazon.com/codeguru
Just like Amazon.com, AWS customers write a lot of code. Software development is a well understood process. Developers write code, review it, compile the code and deploy the application, measure the performance of the application, and use that data to improve the code. Then, they rinse and repeat. Yet, all of this process doesn’t matter if the code is incorrect to begin with, which is why teams perform code reviews to check the logic, syntax, and style before new code is added to an existing application code base.
Even for a large organization like Amazon, it’s challenging to have enough experienced developers with enough free time to do code reviews, given the amount of code that gets written every day. And even the most experienced reviewers miss problems before they impact customer-facing applications, resulting in bugs and performance issues. Even after an application is up and running, developers still need to monitor performance to make sure it is running efficiently.
Typically, developers monitor application performance through logging, which allows them to observe how much time an application takes to complete a task. However, logging is cumbersome to implement (requiring developers to instrument every function in the application), negatively impacts application performance, and doesn’t measure other metrics like CPU utilization that contribute to compute costs, leaving developers without a tool to effectively identify cost-saving opportunities for applications in production. Organizations often incur unnecessarily higher costs (sometimes upwards of tens of millions of dollars) for running applications that are in need of further optimizations because these applications consume more CPU and infrastructure than they should.
Amazon CodeGuru is a new developer service that uses machine learning to automate both code reviews during application development and profiling of applications in production. Amazon CodeGuru has two components:
Code Reviewer: Developers can use machine learning-powered Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer to automatically flag common issues that deviate from best practices (potentially leading to production issues), while also providing specific recommendations on how to fix them, including example code and links to relevant documentation. For code reviews, developers commit their code as usual to the repository of their choice (e.g. GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket Cloud, AWS CodeCommit) and add Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer as one of the code reviewers, with no other changes to the normal development process. Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer analyzes existing code bases in the repository, identifies hard to find bugs and critical issues with high accuracy, provides intelligent suggestions on how to remediate them, and creates a baseline for successive code reviews. To do so, Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer opens a pull request and automatically starts evaluating the code using machine learning models that have been trained on several decades of code reviews at Amazon.com and over ten thousand open-source projects on GitHub. If Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer discovers an issue (e.g. thread safety issues, use of un-sanitized inputs, inappropriate handling of sensitive data such as credentials, resource leaks, redundant copy and pasted code, deviation from best practices for using Java and AWS APIs, etc.), it will add a human-readable comment to the pull request that identifies the line of code, specific issue, and recommended remediation. Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer also provides a pull request dashboard that lists information for all code reviews (e.g. status of the code review, number of lines of code analyzed, and the number of recommendations). Users may also give feedback on CodeGuru Reviewer recommendations by clicking on a thumbs up or thumbs down icon, which helps improve recommendations over time using machine learning.
Application Profiler: Developers can use machine learning-powered Amazon CodeGuru Profiler to identify the most expensive lines of code (in terms of potential estimated dollar savings) by helping them understand the runtime behavior of their applications (including serverless applications running via AWS Lambda or AWS Fargate), identify and remove code inefficiencies, improve performance, and significantly decrease compute costs. For example, Amazon’s internal teams have used Amazon CodeGuru Profiler on more than 30,000 production applications, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in savings on compute and infrastructure costs. Further, the Amazon.com Consumer Payments team used Amazon CodeGuru Profiler from 2017 to 2018 to gain efficiencies for the biggest shopping day of the year – Prime Day – and realized a 325% efficiency increase in CPU utilization across their applications and lowered costs by 39%. To get started with Amazon CodeGuru Profiler, customers install a small, low-profile agent in their application that can observe the application run time and profile the application to detect code quality issues (e.g. recreation of expensive objects, use of inefficient libraries, evaluating null or undefined values, etc.) along with details on latency and CPU usage. Amazon CodeGuru Profiler then uses machine learning to automatically identify code methods (reusable blocks of code also called functions) and anomalous behaviors that are most impacting latency and CPU usage. This information is brought together in a profile that clearly shows the areas of code that are most inefficient and provides visualizations that identify the code methods that are creating bottlenecks, along with a time-series graph of detected anomalies. The profile includes recommendations on how developers can fix issues to improve performance and also estimates the cost (in dollars) of continuing to run inefficient code so developers can prioritize remediation. Developers can now take advantage of the same technology deployed at Amazon to improve application performance and customer experiences, while also eliminating their most expensive lines of code.
“Our customers develop and run a lot of applications that include millions and millions of lines of code. Ensuring the quality and efficiency of that code is incredibly important, as bugs and inefficiencies in even a few lines of code can be very costly. Today, the methods for identifying code quality issues are time-consuming, manual, and error-prone, especially at scale,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President, Amazon Machine Learning, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “CodeGuru combines Amazon’s decades of experience developing and deploying applications at scale with considerable machine learning expertise to give customers a service that improves software quality, delights their customers with better application performance, and eliminates their most expensive lines of code.”
Amazon CodeGuru is available today in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), EU (London), EU (Frankfurt), EU (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) with availability in additional regions in the coming months.
Teams at more than 170,000 companies rely on Atlassian products to make teamwork easier, and help them organize, discuss, and complete their work. “At Atlassian, many of our services have hundreds of check-ins per deployment. While code reviews from our development team do a great job of preventing bugs from reaching production, it’s not always possible to predict how systems will behave under stress or manage complex data shapes, especially as we have multiple deployments per day,” said Zak Islam, Head of Engineering, Tech Teams, Atlassian. “When we detect anomalies in production, we have been able to reduce the investigation time from days to hours and sometimes minutes thanks to Amazon CodeGuru’s continuous profiling feature. Our developers now focus more of their energy on delivering differentiated capabilities and less time investigating problems in our production environment.”
EagleDream Technologies is a trusted cloud-native transformation company and APN Premier Consulting Partner for businesses using AWS. “Part of application development is the creation of performant systems as well as the feedback and continuous improvement of existing systems. This starts with a strong architectural foundation but often ends in the details of the application code. When our team at EagleDream is digging into these details there are a variety of tools at our disposal, and using both static and dynamic analysis is helpful,” said Dustin Potter, Principal Could Solutions Architect at EagleDream Technologies. “We’ve found that the runtime analysis offered by the CodeGuru Profiler is one of the simplest and fastest to get running, and generates insights into the application code that are easy to remediate. Using this tool we’ve been able to quickly hone in on portions of an application that represent bottlenecks that would have otherwise been difficult to spot, then develop changes that can be implemented and tested with a very fast feedback loop. This allows us to continuously deliver and improve our own workloads and the workloads of our customers, making them more performant while saving on cost at the same time.”
DevFactory manages over 600 million lines of code across over a hundred enterprise software products. “A key component of our future roadmap is to turn all our products into cloud-native products that leverage the incredible array of managed services available at AWS. Rebuilding old school, on-prem architectures, and transforming them for the cloud brings a whole set of engineering challenges that range from keeping abreast with all the latest services to adjusting to the paradigm shift that is associated with these architectures,” said Rahul Subramaniam, CEO at DevFactory. “CodeGuru is an incredibly valuable tool that helps optimize our products’ performance while making sure that we are leveraging these services with all the best practices in place. Without tools like CodeGuru Reviewer, we wouldn’t have been able to rewrite entire products like FogBugz to be AWS cloud-native. We are now using CodeGuru Profiler to optimize a number of products including EngineYard’s container-based ‘No Ops’ platform and well as the next generation of the Jive collaboration platform.”
RENGA, Inc. is a company that operates one of Japan’s largest condominium reviews and evaluation sites used by more than 1 million people every month. “Poor quality code adds complexity to the system and can become technical debt at some point. On the other hand, as long as consistent code quality is maintained, scaling the system won’t prevent developers from extending features as the code itself is simple,” said Kazuma Ohara, CTO at RENGA. “At RENGA, the code review process is important, however, it should not increase workload for reviewers or become a bottleneck in development. Powered by machine learning, Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer helped us automate code reviews and reduced the workload required on reviewers. We could seamlessly integrate Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer into our existing development pipeline. Furthermore, learning the best practices of coding – which we were not aware of – has helped us develop with more confidence.”
YouCanBook.me is a small, independent, and fully remote team, that loves solving scheduling problems all over the world. “Our use of Amazon CodeGuru Profiler is very simple but extremely valuable,” said Sergio Delgado, Engineering Team Lead at YouCanBook.me. “We’ve optimized our worst performant service to reduce its latency by 15% for the 95th percentile in a typical work day.”
PNY Technologies, the European leader in components and accessories, is today announcing the launch of its All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dock. This multifunctional all-in-one solution combines nine connection ports to allow USB, USB-C, HDMI, VGA, RJ45 inputs and outputs, as well as a SD and microSD slots.
Whilst more laptops and tablets are coming to the market equipped with Type-C, they usually only have one connection port. However, very often users need to be able to use various peripherals, which is a struggle with the one connection port. The PNY All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dock meets users’ needs by offering a flexible and portable multifunctional tool that’s capable of maximizing the potential of their work environment, no matter where they are. With an integrated foldable cable, it provides an ideal all-in-one compact solution to allow users to be more efficient and overcome any connectivity issues on both USB-C Macs and Windows compatible laptops.
The nine connection ports mean users can read their memory cards, connect a monitor and any other peripherals. Enjoy high-speed transfer up to 5Gbps, 4K high definition picture or video in HDMI or display in VGA, and wired reliable network access at speed up to 1 Gbps. Supporting Power delivery up to 100W pass-through charging, you can power your laptop while accessing the other functions of the dock. (Charger not included).
Additionally, the ergonomic design of the All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dock, enables users to create a working environment at home that’s as efficient as at the office. There’s no need for messy wires taking up desk space or running out of ports on your device – all you need is one cable connection from your laptop. Thanks to its simple, compact design and its soft touch finish, the PNY All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dock is easy to transport, making it ideal for mobile users whose work requires multiple connections in different locations. You can always have the right connection in the office or working from home.
Marlène Joseph, product manager at PNY says: “We are very proud to launch a product that meets the ergonomic and practical needs that users are looking for in their workspace. The crisis we are currently going through has shown us that it is possible to work from home and be productive if we are equipped with the right tools. With the All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dockeveryone can have a functional and all-in-one tool to optimize their work environment and easily stay connected.”
PNY All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dock specifications:
Input/Output
1 x USB-C input (connect to a Type-C host PC)
2 x USB-C (Data & Power Delivery Charging)
2 x USB-A 3.1 (up to 5Gbps data transfer, one BC 1.2 up to 1.5A downstream charging, one up to 900mA)
1 x HDMI – screens & projectors
1 x VGA – screens and projectors
1 x RJ45 – 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet performance
1 x SD slot
1 x microSD slot
Resolutions
– HDMI : Max 4Kx2k@30Hz
– VGA : Max 1920×1200@60Hz
Power supply: Type-C PD Charging: Max 100W(20V/5A)
Product size: 12 x 7 x 1,4 cm
PNY All-In-One USB-C Mini Portable Dock is available from Amazon at the end of June 2020 and at a RRP of 89,99€ / £79.99.
Esri Ireland, the market leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), is today launching an interactive StoryMap on The History of Pride in Ireland. Based on Esri’s digital mapping platform, the map allows users to explore the major historic places and dates which have helped lead to positive change and progress for members of the LGBTQ+ community across Ireland.
The timeline of the Irish Pride movement encompasses foundational events as far back as June 1974, when 10 people marched to the British Embassy in Dublin to protest against the criminalisation of homosexuality. The map provides information on the first official Pride Week in the city in 1979, through large scale LGBTQ+ protests in the 1980s and up to the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015.
Esri Ireland launches interactive StoryMap of the History of Pride in Ireland.
The StoryMap blends together maps, images, text, embedded videos and tweets, and links to further articles and information to present a comprehensive history of the Pride movement. Today, it has grown into one of the biggest festivals celebrated in Ireland, with tens of thousands attending the 40th anniversary of the very first Pride Festival last year.
Due to COVID- 19, this year’s festival was moved to a digital format, with the StoryMap providing all the relevant links for anyone wishing to learn more about the virtual parade and concert set to take place on Sunday, June 28th 2020. The StoryMap is available to view at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/df083b34c03f4f52ac166adcb60a871a
Google Arts & Culture launch a collection of interactive games that make art, culture and history accessible in a fun and educational way
Google have today launched ‘Play with Arts & Culture’, a collection of five interactive games that allow people to indulge in arts and culture with friends and family across the globe from the comfort of their own home. The games aim to make art, culture and history accessible in a fun and educational way and are an engaging way to get inspired and play while learning more about arts and culture.
It’s time to have some fun while immersing yourself in the history of the world’s culture and art! Whether you want to solve artistic jigsaw puzzles together with family and friends using PUZZLE PARTY, discover more art through unexpected pairings in VISUAL CROSSWORDS, compare cultural moments in time on WHAT CAME FIRST, color your way through the palettes of famous paintings in the ART COLORING BOOK, or get cultured playing CULTURAL CROSSWORDS now you can all from the comfort of your couch.
Google Arts & Culture puts the treasures, stories and knowledge of over 2,000 cultural institutions from 80 countries at your fingertips. It’s an immersive way to explore art, history, wonders of the world and stories about cultural heritage from Van Gogh’s bedroom paintings, Mandela’s prison cell to Ancient Temples, Dinosaurs, Indian Railways or Food in Japan. Google has been an innovation partner for cultural institutions since 2011 working together on developing and applying technologies that help to preserve and share culture in new ways.
The Google Arts & Culture app is free and available on the web, on iOS and Android.
Creative Technology today announced the launch of the Creative SXFI TRIO, triple-driver USB-C in-ear headphones, designed to deliver high-quality holographic audio with all-day comfort on Android phones, PCs and laptops.
Implemented with the latest Super X-Fi Gen2 technology, users can expect greater accuracy in personalisation and a better all-round audio experience. Powered by the same triple-driver system as the well-received Aurvana Trio and fitted with a custom-designed Kevlar USB-C cable, SXFI TRIO sets to exceed expectations with balanced, accurate, and natural-sounding digital audio for users on the go.
Wired for Pristine Digital Audio
SXFI TRIO delivers pristine digital audio and great performance powered by an in-house tuned, hybrid triple-driver system. Each of the three drivers (two precision balanced armature drivers for detailed mids and highs, and a bio-cellulose driver for powerful yet clean bass) plays an important part to achieve maximum audio fidelity. Yielding up to 100 dB SNR and 0.008% IMD, SXFI TRIO offers users exceptional audio clarity with balanced and accurate audio that is natural sounding.
Intricately designed and engineered, SXFI TRIO is also fitted with a custom-designed, Kevlar-reinforced cable for exceptional tensile strength, and wrapped in an aluminium and copper shield for higher durability. Its all-round superior quality makes it perfect for use on mobile devices while on the go.
The cream of the features crop is the critically-acclaimed Super X-Fi technology, which is incorporated through an attached in-line SXFI WIRE, which is a 40% smaller version of the already finger-sized SXFI AMP, the first-ever Super X-Fi product and an icon in its own right. Users can enjoy holographic audio which is personalized for an all-natural surround audio experience, that can rival a high-end 7.1 surround sound system.
Work-Learn-Play from Home All Day
SXFI TRIO truly sets itself apart with a new level of audio realism for calls, and makes video calls with family and friends more intimate. It’s also excellent for long calls, where the spatialisation of Super X-Fi eliminates the fatigue associated with conventional headphones.
As such, SXFI TRIO is the perfect companion to Work-Learn-Play from home with, instead of bulky headphones.
SXFI TRIO’s angled earbuds are intricately designed and fine-tuned for long-lasting comfort, and it comes with 6 pairs of different silicone ear tip sizes, so it will be a breeze to find the perfect fit.
Creative’s CEO Sim Wong Hoo said, “The SXFI TRIO is an all-rounder, ideal for all day in all places. It’s a miniaturised wonder. The triple-driver performance can rival high-end, bulky headphones; with Super X-Fi integrated, I believe it will be very hard to match. Moreover, you are getting two products for the price of one, because it basically integrates the SXFI AMP and the Aurvana Trio into one – their combined price is twice that of SXFI TRIO.”
Pricing and Availability
SXFI TRIO is priced at £124.99 and is available at Creative.com.
Esri Ireland, the market leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), today announces that a new COVID-19 data hub, compiling official figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) and the Health Service Executive (HSE), is now publicly available to view.
The data hub is a result of a collaboration between Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi), the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the All-Island Research Observatory (AIRO) and the Department of Health, with Esri Ireland providing technical support for the hub built using its GIS technology and platform.
All figures and data on the hub are updated in line with the latest national figures. In addition to headline figures on total confirmed cases and total deaths, the hub makes large swathes of entirely new information for the public, including testing figures, ICU admissions and hospital capacity.
Furthermore, the hub presents confirmed COVID-19 case counts by electoral division, enabling detailed analysis of the location of cases and for the first time, bringing geography to the forefront in the management of the virus in Ireland. People can now view accurate and up-to-date information on COVID-19 cases in their locality.
A group of major mobility providers in Ireland have written to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party to welcome the commitment in the Programme for Government to legislate for e-scooters, but have also called for a radical rethink in how Ireland manages transport.
FREE NOW, Lime, Bleeperbike, Zip Mobility and Zeus have said any new incoming government must make legislation for e-scooters and other forms of Powered Personal Transporters (PPT) an immediate priority in the wake of COVID-19.
In an open letter sent to the leaders of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party, the providers highlighted the need to radically rethink how Ireland manages transport and the requirement for new forms of micro mobility: “Now, more than ever, we can encourage a shift into alternative forms of transport. Other countries have made the deployment of micro-mobility a key step in supporting their re-opening, it is time for Ireland to do the same. COVID-19 has changed how people will travel and many are seeking alternatives that allow social distancing. E-scooters and other forms of micro-mobility can support this.”
Alan Fox, General Manager of FREE NOW said: “We have brought together the major mobility providers in Ireland and are calling on any incoming government to prioritise the legislation of e-scooters and other micro mobility as a matter of urgency. While we welcome the commitments made in the new Programme for Government, we urge any incoming government to make this legislation a top priority. Ireland needs to radically rethink how we manage the traditional transport modes such as buses and trains to reduce clustering of commuters at peak times. Taxi drivers have been working throughout the pandemic to get essential workers to where they need to be. Taxis will continue to offer the potential to transport passengers in an effective, socially-distanced way, but we now see people looking for greater mode diversity and alternatives to public transport as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We need to offer alternative modes of transport that enable people to get around without putting more private cars on the streets, which would ratchet up congestion again and increase harmful carbon emissions. Now is the time for any new government to allow for more choice and encourage people to leave their cars at home and use e-bikes, e-scooters and other forms of micro mobility.”
The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport ran a public consultation on Personal Powered Transporters (PPTs) last year, but no recent progress has been made to introduce new legislation that would permit the use of e-scooters in Ireland. The commitment to legislate for e-scooters was included in the recently-announced Programme for Government.
The mobility providers also said in the letter that: “We believe that we can help people travel responsibly and we will help usher in the return of economic activity. This is a great opportunity for a new government to encourage passengers to get out of private cars and onto bikes, scooters and other forms of micro-mobility.”
Electric scooters, an efficient and carbon-friendly transport mode that is tailor-made for the new socially-distanced normal, are already an integral part of the transport mix in many European countries like Germany and France that are easing restrictions with measured transport circulation.
