In Hartstown Park, councillors sound alarm over growing number of scramblers

Strolling through the main entrance of Hartstown Park in Dublin 15 on Wednesday evening, the sun sits ablaze over the bustling football pitches.

Parents watch their kids from the sidelines, while joggers and walkers make their way along the path around the park’s perimeter.

As the path leads from one bit of green space to the next, another set of pitches opens up.

A new sound cuts through. It’s the shrill rattle of a scrambler bike – now outlawed in public places. Two lads, mid-teens, fly past.

The one on the back, without provocation, sticks up his middle finger and shouts some profanity as they pass on the narrow pedestrian path.

A sign, to their left, stands ignored. “The use of motorised vehicles is prohibited,” it reads.

At last week’s meeting of the Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart/Castleknock/Ongar Area Committee, Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly put forward a motion around the rise of scramblers in Hartsown Park.

It called on the chief executive to “deploy at least one park ranger to Hartstown Park from 5pm to closing time”.

Just for a few weeks, it said, “to try to stop the constant use of scramblers, surrons [electric dirt bikes] and electric scooters, which has reached epidemic proportions”.

“I'm certainly not looking for park rangers to go and tackle these lads,” Donnelly told the meeting. Rather for them to be there acting as a conduit to the gardaí, she said.

She and her council colleagues get almost daily complaints from residents, she said on the phone on Monday – about the scramblers, but also about what some feel is a peak in more general “anti-social behaviour”. 

In the park on Monday, joggers and strollers had varied views, but mostly said they don’t mind teenagers hanging around being teenagers. It’s the bikes, they say, that are the safety issue.

Grace’s Law, named for Grace Lynch who was knocked down and killed by a scrambler in Finglas in January, came into effect at the beginning of April.

The new legislation makes it an offence to drive a scrambler or similar off-road vehicle in public places, and gives gardaí the power to seize them on the spot.

However, Donnelly told the council meeting that the force in the area is understaffed. 

“There aren't enough guards, probably in the whole of the K District, to solve this issue on their own,” she said.

At the meeting

At the council meeting, Stephen Johnson, an assistant parks and landscape officer, said that sending out a park ranger every evening wasn’t feasible.

The council’s mobile rangers cover a large area, he said. “From Millenium Park, Hartstown Park, Corduff, down to Damastown.”

He can’t guarantee one just for Hartstown Park, he said. They may need to respond to something elsewhere.

“There’s no point me sitting here, making a commitment with you that we can't stand by,” he said.

There have been more scramblers, surrons, scooters and e-bikes around the park recently, he said.

“We’ve noticed the difference in them since probably January of this year,” said Johnson. “It’s been much worse, much earlier than sort of the usual patterns that we get with them in Hartstown Park.”

The council has responded, he said. They have replaced benches and increased litter picks. “We've tried to do the usual things that we do to try and mitigate that behaviour.”

They have also engaged with An Garda Síochána, holding a site visit with uniformed officers and council officials last Monday. “It was very well received by the public,” said Johnson.

Donnelly said that she wasn’t looking for a permanent commitment for a park ranger to be there every evening. Just a temporary thing, “To try and disrupt the pattern of behaviour that is unfolding.”

“If we had a storm tomorrow, finances and resources would be deployed to cleaning up after that storm,” she said.

“If we had a cold snap, finances and resources would be deployed to salting the roads, to gritting the paths,” she said. She just wants more visibility for a few weeks, she said. 

A mixed picture

Lads are there every evening without fail, said David Byrne, co-chairperson of Hartstown Huntstown F.C., which uses the park for matches and training.

It is a problem, he said, how some intimidate passersby, and act entitled to the path ahead of pedestrians, bicycles and buggies, he says.

“I've seen it where there's women with their children running for cover, if you want to call it that, because they're beeping and revving the bikes behind them,” he said.

Donnelly said that she has heard from older locals who won’t go into the park at the moment, because they are frightened. 

Three residents’ groups have asked for a bench to be removed, because of the noise that the vehicles create when people congregate around the bench, she says.

They have asked for kissing gates at all entrances, she said. But that would prevent access for people using wheelchairs, walkers, or pushing prams.

At last week’s committee meeting, Councillor John Burtchaell of the Solidarity party, said that it had taken the tragic death of Grace Lynch for the government to act.

Burtchaell says he fears a similar outcome is inevitable in Hartstown Park. “We need a government response as well as a council response.”

The problem was raised at last month’s meeting of the Fingal West Local Community Safety Partnership, said its chairperson Philip Jennings.

The partnership wrote a letter to the Minister for Justice, Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan TD, asking him to bring in a national registration system for scrambler bikes, to track their purchase, he said by phone on Tuesday.

Youngsters copped on in recent years that you could buy a scrambler, or an on-road version that looks like a scrambler, without registration – meaning there is no paper trail back to who bought it.

“You can give it to a child, and he can do what he likes,” he said. “These are mean machines we’re talking about.”

Jennings is cautious to label young people and their actions as anti-social behaviour when often, he said, they don’t mean any harm.

Others out and about in the park earlier this week took a similar view. 

The youngsters have never bothered him, said Robert Donnelly, out for a walk. “They seem to keep to themselves.”

It’s the scramblers that people find intimidating, rather than the lads just hanging around, he said.

Anthony Smyth, out for his stroll, said similar. That the lads have never bothered him directly, but he understands they are causing issues for others, he said.

“The later it gets, people won't come into the park,” he says. “It's the old people you’d be worried about, not the likes of myself.”

The rowdy teenagers do always get out of her way, said Melissa Jordan, who was out for a jog around the park with her friend. They’ve never said anything bad to her, she said. 

But she is nervous a child could be knocked down by the scramblers or scooters as they fly around at great speed, she said.

If a child wandered out in front of one, she doesn’t think the bikes would be able to stop in time, she says.