The car stolen in the incident has not been recovered.
CCTV footage recorded in Meath shows thieves using a relay device to steal a BMW car, a type of theft that is on the rise across Europe.
Footage shared with RTÉ News shows a pair of thieves using a device to pick up the signal on the car key located inside the house of its owner and drive away less than a minute later.
According to RTÉ, the BMW car stolen in the footage has not yet been recovered.
https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/935807262689497096
The owner of the car told RTÉ that, having been alerted to the presence of the thieves outside her house in Clonee by her children, she looked outside with her husband and spotted one man waving “what looked like a chopping board around”.
The method of stealing cars with electronic keys is on the rise across the United Kingdom and Europe, but this is the first time footage of keyless theft has been recorded in Ireland.
Newer models of cars with stop/start buttons rather than an ignition key can have their engines started by the signal from the key without having to enter it into an ignition slot in the car.
The relay devices used in a spate of thefts across the continent can access the signals through brick, glass and wood and the only way currently known of preventing it is to store the car key in a metal lined container indoors in a location not easily accessible from the outside.
The footage from Meath comes after West Midlands Police in the UK released footage of a Mercedes recently being stolen using a similar method; the force advised motorists to invest in a steering lock, check for software updates and consider a tracking system.
Clip via West Midlands Police
