Every day this page will include a sample of stories sent to this website about anti-social behaviour return to main page
	I am living on the XXX Road. From 9 pm every night this area becomes like a car racing circuit for young drivers with 'souped-up cars. At 3 am the Service Station looks AND SOUNDS! like a giant Mondello Park pit stop. You have revving of engines, blowing of horns, loud 'boom-boom' music and dangerous accelerating out onto the XXX Road. These cars are reaching speeds of up to 60mph in 'trial-runs' down the road and back up to the garage. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, this activity can go on until 5am. I, and many other local residents, have had to call the Gardaí on hundreds of occasions. They will arrive, move on the offenders (in what looks like a scene out of 'Convoy') and ten minutes later they all make their way back to the garage. If the much vaunted new 'traffic division' were to work nights they would make arrests for: 1. Dangerous driving. 2. Speeding. 3. Disturbance of the peace. We have asked the owners of the service station (the 24-hour opening is what attracts these young drivers) to put out some kind of cordons to limit the parking areas at night. Despite the fact that, at times, many motorists seeking petrol cannot even get into the forecourt, they will not do so - some taxi drivers will testify that they no longer use this garage because of the congestion and risk of collision. Apart from making our nights a noisy hell, there will inevitably be a bad collision in this area. As usual it will take injuries/fatalities before any concerted action will be taken to alleviate this situation. ------------------------------------------ My son, a college student, recently got a work experience placement in XXX, 90 miles from our home. With great difficulty he managed to raise the cash to buy a second hand car and to insure it. Three weeks later he went to visit a friend in XXX for St. Patrick's Day and decided to stay on to watch the rugby international. While in bed on the night of 18th March his car was utterly destroyed by young vandals who jumped on the roof and bonnet and kicked in his passenger door, breaking the window in the process. My son is in debt to the bank for the price of his car, and does not have the funds to repair it. I know that he was treated with sympathy by the Gardaí but feel that sympathy is not enough. When he rang the local Garda station a week later to say that he had a witness to the hooliganism that destroyed his car, he was asked, 'are you trying to tell me how to do my job?' Result - one very seriously disaffected young man. The same young man does not have a college grant and will have to pay off his car bank loan over the next five years.