Petrol bombs and drive-bys: Why Limerick’s gangland violence is back

In the early hours of May 8th, two masked men in a stolen Audi staged a drive-by shooting, firing nine shots indiscriminately at houses on Limerick's Hyde Road, including at April Collins’s home. More shots were fired at a Collins-owned home on the Hyde Road in November 2024, and in two separate attacks in January 2025. Since then, there have been a dozen violent incidents, including pipe and petrol bomb attacks. The Garda Emergency Response Unit now conducts nightly armed checkpoints in flashpoint areas. The gangs appear undeterred.

Between February and April, the Cork-based bomb disposal unit was deployed on multiple occasions to deal with pipe bombs seized in Limerick’s criminal strongholds.

In 2012 there was hope that the violent territorial feud between the city’s key drug suppliers, the McCarthy-Dundon gang and the Keane-Collopy gang had been calmed, particularly with the jailing of key members of the Dundon family. April Collins’s evidence sealed the case for the State. She moved away from Hyde Road following the court case but in late 2023 she moved back and tit-for-tat attacks ensued.

And what of the new generation street criminals? Some are so young they were not even born when the original feud was in at its peak, but their actions show those gang lines that were drawn still exist: that the feud has never gone away.

Brian Carroll tells In the News about the resurgence in drug-related gang violence in Limerick.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and Suzanne Brennan.

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