GARDAÍ ACROSS DUBLIN and surrounding counties are dealing with nightly car theft incidents as groups of teenage boys steal cars to record TikToks videos.

Videos have emerged of young car thieves driving at extreme speed at night and in broad daylight in areas of Dublin.

The vehicles are not being stolen to order, as has been the case during other recent spates of car thefts, instead they’re being used for what once was called ‘joyriding’ – a lethal scourge that has eased since the late 1990s due to security features on newer cars. 

The majority of the car thefts are of Asian imports which do not have immobilising devices, which prevent the car from being started without the required key fob. Gangs are also committing burglaries to take car keys for other makes and models.

The young gangs taking the cars are posting footage of the aftermath of the thefts, including encounters with garda vehicles, on social media platforms. 

In one such video, taken in the north of Dublin late this week, a passenger can be heard screaming encouragement as the young driver, wearing a balaclava, speeds the wrong way down roadways before driving the wrong way down a sliproad onto a motorway. 

The driver appears to be too small to reach the pedals of the car he’s driving. 

The video continues with the passenger screaming that the pursuing gardaí are “blown” as the driver pilots the car through oncoming traffic, flashing his lights at an oncoming truck as he speeds onto the motorway. 

The car thieves are then seen driving the wrong way against the flow of traffic on an M50 off ramp to avoid a garda pursuit. 

Just last weekend, in the early hours of Sunday, a car carrying eight young people collided head on with an innocent motorist who was driving off the M50 near Firhouse. The car had been stolen from elsewhere in Dublin. 

It is understood that investigations have found that on that occasion the driver of the stolen car spotted a garda car and went immediately the wrong way down an M50 off ramp.

Garda forensic collision investigators at the scene of a crash on the M50 in which nine people were injured, including eight young people in an alleged stolen car. Collins Collins

Garda watchdog body Fiosrú is investigating the gardaí involved as a matter of protocol, as they must do whenever people who are in contact with officers are seriously injured or killed. 

As reported previously by The Journal gardaí are not trained in pursuit driving and this is limiting what they can do. 

Sources have said that the garda cars that are tracking these vehicles are being told to “stand down” their pursuits once it is assessed to be too dangerous. 

Sources have said gardaí are also being trained in the use of stinger devices which can be placed in the path of a fleeing car and safely burst its tyres. 

It is understood that the view at senior national garda management level is that the pursuit policy does not specifically require pursuits to be stood down in the absence of either a pursuit trained driver or a serious incident dispatcher. Each pursuit is taken on a case-by-case basis. 

48 hours

While they are not being permitted to pursue cars gardaí are having some success in their operations. 

The Journal has learned that in one 48-hour period on Thursday and Friday units across Dublin and down the east coast from Wicklow to Wexford, uniform and detective units have dealt with numerous incidents. 

In some of those incidents they have made arrests or recovered the cars. In one incident a car stolen in a Dublin suburb was found parked up in Wexford. 

They have also arrested young teenage boys as they are attempting to find a car to steal. 

There are other incidents in which gardaí are responding to reports of “cars on the go”. When they catch occupants of the cars they are almost always repeat offenders who are in their early teens. 

On Thursday there was a pursuit of an Audi S7 out of the southern suburbs of the city and onto the N7, leading west. In that case, the driver escaped gardaí and the vehicle was recovered the following day. 

Overnight into Friday morning there were reports of a BMW stolen and driven away. Two children were arrested from that car.

The volume of calls being dealt with is vast and the gardaí themselves are narrowly escaping injury in some of the incidents. 

In Santry this week a garda car was rammed and flipped over by a stolen car. In that incident the car thieves had broadcast footage of themselves driving dangerously before the collision. 

A garda car which was flipped when a stolen car rammed into it in Dublin this week.

Multiple gangs

We spoke to several sources across the Dublin Metropolitan Region and they all said similar about various different groups of teenagers who are involved in the thefts. 

They are all known to gardaí and when they are arrested they are also suspects for other crimes. Reports previously had said it was one localised group known as the Lucky Dip gang but this has now spread across the city.  

It is nothing new and is a problem across the country, although the volume of calls associated with the crime sprees is stretching the operational capabilities of gardaí.

In the 1980s when so-called joyriding was at its peak there were special measures put in place with extra prison spaces. There was also the creation of specific offences such as Unauthorised Taking and interfering with the mechanism of a vehicle. 

The teenagers arrested can, if they get to court, be charged with multiple counts of dangerous driving, driving without insurance, driving without a licence and other offences. 

However, the system also dictates that there must be youth diversion engagement and that prosecution is a last resort. 

Garda spokesman view

In a lengthy response to our query a garda spokesman said that provisional Crime trends for the first 6 months of 2026 indicate that theft of vehicles is trending down nationally at minus six percent. The garda said that Dublin is trending 8% downward.

Only one Garda Region, the North-western region, is trending up.

The garda spokesman said the Garda Commissioner has pursuit training is a priority for him.

Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said in February: “We have a pursuit policy, we have done a lot of work particularly with our control centres to upskill our people, basically that manage any of these spontaneous pursuits, but there is nowhere in the world that deal with the pursuit of motorcycles that it is not a very challenging area to deal with and sometimes we have to unfortunately take decisions if there is a spontaneous pursuit and it is too dangerous for the general public, that sometimes we can’t continue those…..”

A pursuit policy was introduced in December 2024 and developed following engagement with the Garda Representative Associations. 

“The current documents provide guidance and direction to Garda personnel who in the course of their duties engage in the use of pursuit tactics and pursuit management in order to reduce the risk associated with pursuits and stopping of subject vehicles, rather than a prescriptive process,” the statement said.