The young criminal: Michael (15) has four previous convictions and is facing 41 charges. He stole his first car when he was 13 and would like to be a mechanic, writes Kitty Holland.
"I just started going out robbing because I was bored," he says shrugging his shoulders. "There was nothing else to do and the older ones I was hanging out with were doing it so..."
From Dublin's north inner city, Michael (not his real name) explains he has been convicted of obstructing a Garda officer, handling stolen property and twice for offences under the Road Traffic Act.
Dark- haired and freckled, with the sparkling smile of a boy five years younger, he says stealing cars is easy.
"You just pull off the casing round the \ wheel, pull back the barrel and stick a key in it. Any key, just stick one in and away you go."
Sitting with his mother in a coffee shop near the Children's Court, Michael seems perhaps more shy than he would be if she weren't there. He is animated, however, recalling the first car he robbed - a red Mazda MX5.
"It was lovely. I got it round the back of my old school, off Richmond Street, took it up to Dollymount Strand. I was by myself. Nah, I wouldn't drive fast until I got up to Dollymount or Howth or that, but then you can scramble about, go for a spin."
Asked how many cars he has stolen, he grins. "There were loads I didn't get caught for so I'm not telling about them." When pressed, he says there were about 20.
"You just do it for the buzz, for a laugh. There's just nothing else to do and I love cars so I do."
His mother explains he was "a great child" when he was younger and it was with her younger son, now 12, that she had had most trouble until two years ago.
"David (not his real name) was just a wild child," she says inhaling deeply on several cigarettes during our chat. "We know now he had a disability, hyperactive, though we didn't know it at the time. I tried to get help for him, wrote to social workers loads of times and they didn't even reply to my letters."
David is now receiving residential help following the intervention of the courts.
"But the attention was always on David - we were always at night saying 'We have to go out and find David', and Michael didn't get a look in."
She says she believes he "got fed up" and started "acting up to get attention".
"I really believe it was a cry for attention. And he would have liked a father figure."
She and her husband separated six years ago. Asked if he would have liked his father around, Michael throws his eyes to heaven. "No I wouldn't. I couldn't care if he was six feet under."
His mother says he would have "liked it years ago, but it's too late now. He [Michael's father\] would come round to see the kids when it suited him."
She says Michael "calmed down a lot" after a friend died when a stolen car he was travelling in crashed earlier this year. The driver of the other car was also killed in the incident.
Michael was in a residential assessment centre the day of the crash but had seen his friend earlier. "I told him not to go into any car that night so he'd come and see me the next day."
His mother says he could have been in the car if he had been out that night and she thanks God "every day" he wasn't.
"He went up and seen him in James' \ and that really shook him. He's not been in a stolen car since," she claims.
Michael has not a good word to say about the Garda. "They're scumbags. They're always pulling up and hassling me. I've been smacked and beaten round the place loads of times.
"One time I was brought up to Fitzgibbon Street station and they beat me up, pushed me up against the wall with my hands behind my back. Another time they were pushing me face down into the ground saying my ma was a junkie and a whore, just to get me going."
Nodding her head, his mother says she had to bring him to Temple Street Children's Hospital after one such beating. "They whacked him over his head with handcuffs. He had a real tight haircut then and you could see the marks on the top of his head. They [the Garda\] are always at him, blaming everything on him."
Fr Peter McVerry, who has been working with homeless boys for 25 years, says "every" boy he has come across "could recount bad experiences of the guards, whether that be beatings, verbal abuse, threats. Universally these boys are extremely alienated from the guards."
Although some gardaí are terrific, says Fr McVerry, and "totally interested in working with and encouraging these kids, it takes 10, 20 good experiences to compensate for every bad one.
"For these young people, the gardaí stand for society... It is far more damaging than being abused by say a shop-keeper in that respect. Deep alienation from society is inevitable."
He has become increasingly worried over the past seven to eight years that Garda management has "lost control of the average garda".
When asked to make a formal complaint against gardaí who abused them, Father McVerry says young people never chose to.
"There are two big obstacles. One, they don't believe it will go anywhere or be investigated. And two, there is a fear, justifiably, that they'll get a worse beating the next time."
A Garda Ombudsman was vital, he said, adding that the forthcoming Garda Inspectorate "is not going to do anything" to address these issues.
Solicitor Mr Paddy Goodwin, who represents young offenders, decries the lack of support available to families of children at risk of engaging in criminal behaviour. Having worked for more than 10 years in the area, he says he has "never" come across a family that was "properly" supported by the statutory services.