Boys will be boys, I guess.
Back when I was a young lad being dragged up in Coolock Joyriding was commonplace, a nightly occurrence with burnt out cars all over the place. In fact, my father drove company cars in the 70s when there weren't that many decent motors on the road and they were always executive type motors, max 2yo Granadas, Audis and such like... I remember a lad asking him how often he (actually, the company he worked for) changed his car... every time it's robbed, says he!
In recent years I've heard residents of Darndale and surrounding areas complain of their housing schemes being terrorised by joyriding gangs and such like and I've been pretty dismissive of it. I work those areas frequently so I know it's nothing like it was when I was a young lad as far as joyriding goes. The gangs roaming the streets these days are more into drugs than anything else.
Darndale residents, in particular, play a good game as far as publicity goes.. they know their ex neighbours who've moved away to what they believe to be middle class areas (and may have been before they arrived!) love to tell all and sundry how bad their natural habitats are so they join in and milk it for all it's worth. You don't get community centres, playing fields, parklands, swings/slides, etc if there's no perceived need for such investment.
However, there has been an increase in burnt out cars in recent months. A colleague of Mrs. Catcher had her car stolen and burnt out and was told by Gardai that gangs in Coolock, Ballymun and Finglas have cracked the key codes for cars like the one she owned, essentially advising her not to buy another similar one. All I know about the car is that it was a Jap import (not a Prius) and it was white!