Ballymun Car Chase: Here’s How It Unfolded

THE nation was gripped yesterday as a white Mercedes lead gardaí on a high-speed chase from Ballymun to Bray and back again, while the offending driver live streamed the chase on her Instagram account.

But just what were the circumstances that lead up to the dangerous, dramatic pursuit? WWN may have the answers, broken down in this timeline:

Early 1960s

Faced with a crucial shortage of housing in the inner parts of Dublin city, the government finally accepts that it cannot keep housing people in crumbling, Rising-era tenements. Under pressure, Fianna Fáil agree the construction of several high-rise blocks, which are constructed by 1965 with the first tenants moving in early 1966.

Amenities in the area are sparse, and unemployment becomes rife. Then on the very outskirts of Dublin city centre, the area is easily ignored by successive governments and an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ policy is put in place.

By the 80s, the area has becoming awash with staggering levels of unemployment and dearth of facilities, creating the perfect environment to allow the flood of cheap heroin to ravage the communities. Rather than tackle this problem head on, a blind eye is turned and ‘Ballymun’ becomes an easy punchline for poverty, drug abuse, single parenthood and homelessness.

Mid 2000s

An extensive regeneration programme is launched in Ballymun, leading to the demolition of the iconic flats and the re-housing of the tenants. The area remain deemed ‘lower class’ and drug gangs maintain a presence in the area.

Savage cuts to policing results in the arrival of newer, deadlier drug lords. Residents of Ballymun are profiled as having a higher chance of being criminals, and discrimination runs rampant across Ireland whenever anyone mentions they’re ‘from Ballymun’, creating a social divide that festers to this day.

2009

Ikea opens.

2010-2019

Congratulating themselves on a job well done, the government leaves the area to itself, although gardaí maintain presence here and there if their numbers are low and they need a few arrests to make their quota. Being ‘from Ballymun’ is still regarded as a black mark against you and while many work hard to shake this off and succeed, there’s a lingering feeling of ‘why bother’.

2020

Following several failed lockdowns to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, the government agrees that the best course of action is to have another, bigger lockdown, lasting into 2021. Sentiment in the country reaches ‘bored out of our tits’ levels.

March 1st, 2021

Some young one blows through a Garda checkpoint and all hell breaks loose. This is put down to her being ‘from Ballymun’, as decades of sniggering at the area has taught the nation to expect this kind of thing from ‘those people’.

Further exploration of the young woman’s Instagram page, peppered as it is with drug paraphernalia and selfies of herself enjoying nights out, cements her in the public’s mind as being a drug dealing scumbag, and that the cops were right to send 20 cars screaming up the M50 after her with the helicopter in the air. Calls for the death penalty abound online.

The government mull over the possible nuking of Ballymun, in a bid to solve a problem that nobody really remembers the start of.