The ‘Lucky Dip’ gang and the deadly social media trend that led to fatal crash explained

They were killed in a crash after driving the wrong way down a motorway

Gardaí believe that the five children, aged between 14 and 16, some of whom are related, were involved in a burglary and attempted break-ins in Carlow and Athy, Co Kildare, before the fatal accident.

Post-mortem examinations are to be carried out today on the bodies of five teenage boys. It's understood the body of the fifth boy was not found until hours after the crash.

They were not being pursued by the Gardai at the time of the accident.

Two sisters remain in hospital while another sister and the seven-year-old son of one of the women remain in serious condition in separate hospitals.

The four were making their way to Dublin Airport to attend a family wedding in the UK.

Gardai say the "Lucky Dip" gang are thought to be involved.

The group have been on the radar of the Gardai for years and their activities are now cutting short their young lives and endangering others.

Who are they?

Gardaí believe the 'Lucky Dip’ gang are so called because they choose to target areas at random.

The group are well known in certain areas around Dublin and are thought to believed in incidents as far back as 2022, including the ramming of a Garda car in Cherry Orchard where a 15 year-old boy was given an 11 month sentence along with two others.

The group are all made up of young boys, thought to be 14 to 17. Sources have confirmed to JOE that a lot of the teenagers come from incredibly difficult backgrounds including poverty, domestic violence and have parents who struggle with addiction. Community services are engaged with some of the families however, have been difficult to reach.

Last year the gang were linked to around 300 incidents in just three months, including robberies and break-ins as well as car theft. The gang do not typically sell on the cars they take, unlike organised crime groups, they are stealing for the purpose of joyriding.

This is then displayed on social media.

They share footage of their joyrides on Snapchat and TikTok. Videos are still visible online.

Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said on Sunday: "This horrific incident, following the recent collision on the M50, shows how irresponsible and dangerous driving on the wrong-side of the motorway is. That, of course, should be self-evident, but what makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases it is being done for social media likes regardless of the potentially devastating impact it might have on innocent people and themselves."

Internal garda figures seen by RTE last year show that 11 active members of the gang have been charged a combined 427 times - an average of 39 times each.

The average age of those identified is 16.

People Before Profit councillor Hazel De Nortúin says her thoughts are with the victims of the crash and more needs to done to reach young people before more people die.

"In communities like Ballyfermot, we've exhausted ourselves explaining to Ministers that community organisations, when at the forefront of responses to situations like childhood crime - in this instance, have the best outcomes with prevention," she said.

"If we're serious, we need to get to a place of prevention instead of looking at custodial sentences as a prevention because that's not where these kids heads are at.

In the lives of these kids, they've shown to have a very complex family background that needs the expertise of family supports that in collaboration with state agencies, has the most effective outcome in crime prevention. In some cases, you can trace where a child was missed by early intervention because of large waiting lists for assessments and never catches up with the school system and slowing disengages.

I'd also ask, why has social media continuously allowed children to share these acts of crime online? Furthering the uptake of this reckless behaviour, and further exposing themselves to a lifestyle that seems to have no value on life. Theirs and wider society.

We know how to tackle this, we just don't need to wait for people to be injured or lose their life waiting for resources to allocated."