In new city-centre apartment complexes, thieves target "secure" bike storage within car parks

At around 4.45am on Tuesday morning, Lize Jackson was awoken from her sleep by the screeching sound of an angle grinder.

Her apartment is above an open grate on the roof of the indoor, ground-floor car park shared by various neighbouring apartment blocks of the new Montpelier development in Dublin 7.

The car park also has several lock-up cages for bicycle parking scattered around its periphery.

For the second night in a row, people had broken into the car park, and the cages, and were stealing bicycles.

“We heard the grinder, came down and could just still smell it,” says Jackson.

By then, though, the thieves were gone.

They left behind cut cables, broken locks and scattered parts – saddle posts, wheels, and the remains of cheaper bikes that hadn’t been worth taking.

Just 24 hours previously, in the early hours of Monday morning, people had also gotten entry to the bikes, and several had been stolen.

Jackson doesn’t think they had an angle grinder the first night but came back better equipped on Tuesday.  

The exact number stolen across both nights isn’t fully clear.

Some residents estimate upwards of 20, but at least six people have confirmed that their pricey bikes were lifted. Gardaí said Wednesday that they'd had reports about two.  

Montpelier was “Designed for People, Not Cars”, according to its website.

Typical of the modern planning shift away from catering for motorised vehicles in new developments, Montpelier has just 76 car parking spaces for its 1,046 total residential units across 10 blocks.

It does, however, provide 2,000 bicycle parking spaces.

“It looks secure – and that’s part of the problem,” says Sabin Costea, whose brand-new e-bike was stolen within weeks of moving in.

“If you actually knew it wasn’t secure, you would treat it differently,” Costea says. On a development that’s worth so much money, "they can’t design a good bike park", he says.

Both Felipe Campezoni and his partner’s e-bikes were lifted earlier this week.

“I saw my lock broken far from where I left my bike, so I knew,” he says.

For Campezoni, the loss has meant his commute to work for Irish Ferries has more than doubled.

Zooming out

Montpelier is not the only low-car new city-centre apartment complex that's been hit by bike thieves.

Grand Canal Harbour, in the Liberties, near the Guinness Storehouse, has nearly 600 homes in several high blocks, 50 car parking spaces, and 895 bike parking spaces.

Many of these are in bike cages with fobs on the wall outside, in an underground car park, the car entrance to which is routinely left open and easy to slip into.

Thieves have lifted residents' bikes from Grand Canal Harbour too, according to a resident, and a report from the management company.

In July, resident Mirna Hernandez said that the previous night, more than a dozen bikes had been robbed from the secure bike storage in the complex.

Overall, in Dublin the number of bike thefts reported to Gardaí has declined in recent years from 3,293 in 2023 to 2,790 in 2025, according to the Minister for Justice, Jim O'Callaghan, of Fianna Fáil.

Too few people report to the Gardaí that their bike has been stolen, Joe Gilligan, a spokesperson for Dublin Cycling Campaign, has said in the past.

“Because they think it might be a hopeless venture. You know, that they might never get it back, that the guards won’t help,” he said.

Dublin Cycling Campaign encourages everyone to report it if their bike is stolen, he said. “Because if they did, you know, there is the off chance that it will be recovered. And the guards are working hard.”

Low security

At Montpelier, a wide gap in the large entrance gate from the street into the car park means someone could easily push through a stick or tool to reach an internal sensor meant to open the gates to let cars out, and open it.

Residents are unsure how the thieves got into the compound initially, but suspect it was by that method.

Or simply by following an unwitting resident as they entered.

The main pedestrian entrance to the basement, used for both bins and bike access, is supposed to shut automatically. In reality, it often sticks part‑open unless someone pulls it shut by hand, residents say.

“That door doesn’t fully close properly behind you,” says Costea. “Unless you physically pull it, it will remain open.”

Several videos and photos taken from different times in July and August have been shared around the Montpelier residents' WhatsApp group and show the gates into the car park left ajar.

Once inside the car park, access to the bike cages is controlled by fob readers to get in and internal sensors to get out.

The thieves ripped the external fob units off the wall outside the cages. But they didn't necessarily need to do that to get in.

On Wednesday morning, resident Alice Chambers, whose own bike wasn’t stolen, showed how the door of a bike cage can be opened from outside by sliding a piece of paper through the bars to trigger the internal sensor.

“This is how I got my bike out in the morning,” she said, with usual the method of using her fob no longer possible.

According to Costea, a garda who visited the scene on Tuesday described the system to him as a “faulty design”.

There are multiple companies involved in managing the Montpelier complex.

Hooke & McDonald, the property management company who look after common areas, and Tuath Housing who manage things for the social and cost-rental tenants, were both asked why the issues with the entrance to the car park were not addressed sooner, despite residents' warnings.

Neither have responded to that question.

Nor did they reply when asked if residents whose bikes were robbed would be compensated.

On the walls next to the bike cages, a large sign reads: “Bicycles may be left here at the owners risk. The management will not accept responsibility for any damage, accident or loss.”

Beside that sign, another reads: “CCTV in operation for your personal safety and security.”

Vitoria Villalta’s husband had his bike stolen too, which he had only spent money servicing last week.

It has also upended his daily commute plans.

Villalta is worried about what this means not only for bike security, but personal safety. “If this is happening with the bikes, what’s next?” she asked.

Another video shared around the WhatsApp group on Monday shows a resident who had just managed to reclaim his own bike, stolen just hours earlier.

A man passed him by, and when asked about the stolen bike, said he had just bought it for €300.

When the rightful owner told him it was his bike, the man immediately dropped it on the ground and left the scene without a word of argument.

The resident, who doesn’t want to be named due to personal-safety concerns, said on Thursday that he knows the guy who was on the bike to see from around the neighbourhood.

Correspondence from Hooke & McDonald sent to residents after the second break-in said:

"The estate is currently patrolled by mobile security personnel three times each night at periodic intervals.

"In light of the recent incidents, additional nightly patrols have been arranged.

"Security personnel have been instructed to place particular focus on the Ashford House car park, bicycle storage areas and all associated access points."

The email added that, although there had been requests for "static on-site security", the associated cost of that - around €300 per night, would "ultimately be borne by owners through their service charge".

Sliver of silver

Lize Jackson says that amid the gloom, there has been one piece of silver lining to the whole ordeal.

It has brought residents of the new development, the first tranche of whom only moved in in July, together, she says.

“One good thing out of all of this is how everybody in this block's been responding as a community,” she says.

A spokesperson for Tuath Housing, who manage the social and cost-rental tenancies, said on Thursday that it is “aware of the incidents and is engaging with the management agent and relevant authorities on this matter.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.