A teenage repeat offender was detained for one year and banned from the roads for 60 years for breaking into and attempting to take two cars.
Judge John Coughlan made the order at the Dublin Children's Court after the boy (17) had pleaded guilty to two counts for unlawfully interfering with the mechanism of cars and two counts of criminally damaging them, to the value of €1,300, the court heard.
The court's ruling means that he will be forbidden from holding a driver's licence until 2063, when he will be 77-years-old.
Kilmainham Garda John McShane told Judge John Coughlan that on July 29th last in Blackhall Place, he caught the teenager siting in the driver's seat of a Nissan Primera as he was trying to break the car's steering column.
Garda Shane Costello, Kevin Street Station, also told the court that on May 29th the same boy was arrested in the Old Kilmainham area for breaking into a car. He had interfered with the vehicle's steering lock.
The court heard that he had a number of previous convictions. On April 2nd last he was given a three-year suspended sentence for joyriding. On the same date, he was also detained for six months for a car theft as, well as for other charges for larceny and handling stolen goods. Last December he had been disqualified from having a licence for a year for driving without a licence or insurance.
In mitigation, his counsel, Mr Antoine MacDonnacha, told Judge Coughlan that the boy comes from a family in which many of his siblings had been involved in crime and heroin abuse and that he had pleaded guilty to the offences.
However, Judge Coughlan proceeded to finalise matters yesterday after hearing that the teenager had not brought any money to court. "People who steal cars go to jail," he said and he imposed a one-year term in St Patrick's Institution.