There are problems with scramblers in parks – but all legal motocross tracks are shut down

On Saturday, motocross riders roared around the loop in head-to-toe brightly coloured, padded gear.  

On this dirt track an hour north of Dublin, near Newry, they jump hills and navigate tight turns, kicking up dirt and rocks and dust beside small patches of grass and daisies.

Sitting with his parents in their plush white caravan parked nearby, 12-year-old Shay Flanagan is on a great buzz – he’s come in first place for his first time ever today, he says. 

He grins, lighting up a bright spray of freckles. He was racing in a group of 30, and is in the younger half of his age bracket too – age 11-14 – Flanagan says. 

“It's just the speed. I love the speed of it,” he says. “You just go hard. Flat out.”

He was happy to have won, but it’s not all about winning, he said. He loves the sport, and he loves the friends he competes with each weekend, who also share his passion. 

Shay practises in his family’s field in Westmeath, and on other tracks too, and he races every weekend. 

“I'll try to go pro, and just work on trying to go pro, and then just ride till I die, really,” he says.

There’s a fundamental problem for young competitors in Irish motocross in the Republic right now, though. Every track has been shut down since February, says former Motorcycling Ireland Union Vice President Nick Cragie.

So for people irritated at kids illegally riding scramblers in parks around Dublin, where are they supposed to go? asks Kevin Byrne, one of the founders of Mulhuddart Motocross Club. 

He and two others started the project in 2009, “to stop anti-social behavior in Blanchardstown at the time”, Byrne says. That shut down in 2023, though, he says.  “They’re still paying fees for the company but they’re trying to get the club going again.”

Scrambler chaos

At a meeting on 24 April, Dublin 15’s councillors grappled with how to deal with kids on scramblers roaring around illegally.

Tom Kitt, a Fianna Fáil councillor, said he’d received multiple letters, emails and phone calls on the issue. He read a letter he said he had received from a resident.

“It happened on the ninth of March, Sunday the ninth of March, while walking in Hartstown Park at 7:30 in the morning,” Kitt read. “I was hit from behind with force, with a scrambler bike. As a result, I was knocked to the ground.” 

“The person with the scrambler continued on and left me there, flat out on my back,” he said. “The next morning, I went to the GP, and the morning after, he sent me for an X-ray, it was confirmed that I had three broken ribs and one fracture.”

Other councillors responded, proposing ideas for what to do about people riding scramblers in parks. 

Solutions they raised included new gates, an increased Garda presence, and a national register for bikes. But all of these ideas have drawbacks.

Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly said gates often aren’t effective at stopping scrambler riders, and just block people in wheelchairs or with double prams. 

“The K barriers aren't a deterrent,” she said. And “Accessibility for all of our residents is really important.”

Donnelly was sceptical that more guards would solve the problem either. “It's very, very difficult for the guards, because they can't chase them. You'd nearly want to put somebody on every single entrance,” she said.

Last July, a Garda spokesperson said that “Pursuing offending vehicles involves careful consideration of various factors, such as environmental conditions, the nature of the offence, and risks to public safety including Gardaí.”

“Despite concerns about the reluctance of Gardaí to chase offenders due to potential prosecutions following chases, the DMR [Dublin Metropolitan Region] emphasizes their commitment to arresting individuals using scramblers illegally,” said the spokesperson.

Still, despite Donnelly’s scepticism, the councillors at the meeting mostly settled on increasing the Garda presence and authority as the solution for now.

“The guards have a major responsibility for controlling all this carry on, and that's why I think the law lies,” Kitt said. “They enforce the law, and that's what I think it should be done.”

Later, on the phone, Donnelly said the council is employing four additional rangers to monitor the parks. And a local organisation called Safer Blanchardstown is looking to get funding for drones to follow the scramblers, she said. 

“It's a quite small tank for petrol, so they're going to run out of petrol, and the drone could just keep on a scrambler and see where the scrambler went, and then the guards could go and enter that house and take the scrambler off that young person,” she said. 

During the discussion at the committee meeting, Mary McCamley, a Labour councillor, brought up the Motocross Club in Mulhuddart, and said riders could go there if they want to buzz around legally.

Nope, said the committee chair, Fianna Fáil Councillor John-Kingsley Onwumereh. That track is closed, he said.

Closed

Byrne, the co-founder of Mulhuddart Motocross Club, said that, back in the day, he was one of those kids who would ride wherever, whether or not it was allowed.  

Eventually a farmer saw Byrne on his land, and designated a plot he and his mates could ride on. The farmer taught them about planting seasons and asked them to be wary of crops, and they listened, for the most part, Byrne said. 

After that, that’s where he went to ride. Years later, Byrne wanted other young people to have a space where they could ride and not be breaking rules, and to do it safely.  

He would donate his old padded wear – his annual Christmas gift – and show new riders about the physical risks even when the gear is used, cautioning them that if they were wearing flip-flops a crash would be much worse.

Eventually, he and two other people founded Mulhuddart Motocross Club as a way to reduce antisocial scrambler riding in Dublin 15, he says.  

He said it wasn’t just about the sport, it was about teaching kids in the area about other fundamental life skills.

“It just brings them on, teaches them discipline,” Byrne says. “Like, you know, it's not just going out and riding a bike. It's the maintenance. It's the washing of the bike.” 

“So it was always, you know, building them up for the bigger picture, you know, life basically,” Byrne said. 

He said he and the club had called for drones to follow illegal riders years ago – and he was happy to hear it might happen. The club was all about following the rules, he said.

All kinds of people joined, from gardaí to “some families, you know, that would be quite rough, let's say”.

“We could talk to the politicians, the police, all this,” Byrne says. “But we could also go to the local riff raff, talk to them and sort the problem out. And nine times out of 10, they listened, you know.” 

“Don't get me wrong, there was a few that just went against the grain, because that's, you know, some of them, just, you know, they don't know any different. But on a bigger scale, we done so much for the area,” he said.

“And, you know, insurance really messed it all up,” he said. 

Insurance

The tracks shut down primarily because of insurance, says Craigie, the former vice president of Motorcycling Ireland Union.

Previously, lots of motocross clubs got their insurance through Motorcycling Ireland, he said. 

Mulhuddart Motocross Club was one of the few that didn’t get their insurance through Motorcycling Ireland, Byrne said. Their insurance became unsustainably expensive a couple of years ago and shut down.

Other clubs kept on, but “in the last three years, the insurance premium basically got to the point where it was completely unsustainable in terms of cost,” Craigie said.

They’ve been running on fumes, he said. “Motorcycling Ireland funded the insurance policy from their own funds for the past 18 months,” he said. 

But they got to a point where they couldn’t do that anymore, Craigie said.

“Motocross biking is dead in Ireland,” says Mark Farrelly, who was a pro motocross rider internationally, and more recently has run his own motocross club and brings his 17-year-old son Jake Farrelly and 15-year-old nephew to race each weekend.

It’s not just motocross, either – every motorcycling race is off this year, Craigie said. Because of a lack of insurance. 

"There's no adult racing, there's no kids racing, there's no youth racing, there's no ladies racing. Everything has stopped," he said.

So he stepped back from his role as vice president in February, he said. “Because I felt I couldn't do my job properly unless we could secure insurance.”

Insurance is more affordable in Northern Ireland, and that’s why there’s still racing there, Craigie said. “The problem is the legal system here in the south of Ireland, it's a joke,” he said.

That makes things more difficult for aspiring pros like young Shay Flanagan – and their families. 

“It's hard because his family can't see him like, you know, like his grannies and grandad,” says Ailish Morris, his mother. 

“His granny and granddad and his aunts and uncles are so, like, inspired to watch him, but they can't because it's so far away,” she said. 

It also leaves community projects like Mulhuddart Motocross Club shut down. 

“These motocross bikes are going up and down the streets outside their houses because normally they'd have somewhere to go, now they've nowhere to go, you know,” says Byrne. “And I'll tell you, it's just going to escalate the situation.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.