Vehicles and large pieces of machinery - including quad bikes, jeeps, trailers and skid-steers - are being stolen from farms across the country, often under the cover of darkness, CCTV footage obtained by Prime Time shows.
Certain types of equipment, including GPS systems used in tractors that are worth up to €20,000, are also among the items being stolen.
Farmers who spoke to the programme say they are increasingly concerned about the scale of theft they are experiencing.
Some of the stolen equipment is being transported across Europe by criminal gangs, according to experts.
WATCH: Prime Time gathered footage showing numerous incidents since 2024
One company which uses technology to trace stolen vehicles said it has tracked farm machinery stolen in Ireland to countries including Belarus, Poland and Lithuania.
It is unclear exactly what proportion of stolen vehicles and machinery is being moved overseas but it is suspected much of what is taken out of the country eventually ends up in Russia.
Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, western trade sanctions have prohibited the export of certain machinery used in agriculture to Russia. A black market has since emerged into which Eastern European gangs are supplying stolen machinery.
Senior officers in An Garda Síochána say that the thefts they are investigating from farms are wide-ranging, and relate to everything from livestock to high-value machinery and tools.
"There's an array of machinery and equipment being stolen across the country – trailers, cow boxes, horse boxes, quad bikes, electric fencing equipment, power tools, chainsaws and power washers," Superintendent Michael Corbett said.
Supt Corbett was appointed as the first ever rural crime lead in An Garda Síochána last year.
He says some robbed machinery is taken overseas, or north of the border, but "the vast majority of stolen farm equipment and machinery is staying in the south."
Farmers also say the theft of handheld power tools and equipment has become a significant issue, while a growing concern for many of them is the theft of livestock.
Lambing season
In the last four years, gardaí have had 324 incidents of livestock theft reported. In 2024 there were 70 incidents, this rose to 91 incidents last year.
"There was an increase in 2025 - 1,091 animals were stolen," Superintendent Michael Corbett told Prime Time.
Farmers and industry figures say high meat prices and the growing value of agricultural machinery are fuelling this activity, much of it carried out under the cover of darkness.
With lambing season – which runs from February to April – now in full swing, sheep farmers are urged to be vigilant.
In the last few weeks, Sligo farmer Aidan Sheerin had 14 sheep – a ewe, and 13 lambs, including one born on Christmas day – robbed in the middle of the night from a locked shed on his farm near Grange, Co Sligo.
He was shocked when he went to tend to his sheep one day in early January to find a wire fence had been cut and the animals, valued at over €2,000, were gone.
"I was physically nearly sick when it happened. You'd be thinking about the newborn lamb, and the fact that they were possible taken to be brought for slaughter," Mr Sheerin said.
He offered a €500 reward for information that might help retrieve his sheep, but he fears they were slaughtered immediately after they were stolen.
"The traceability with sheep is practically nil because even with a tag, you can cut the tag out in seconds," Mr Sheerin added.
He said a new tag can be put onto the sheep and if they are pre-booked into a slot in a slaughterhouse "they’ll be good to go and there’s no traceability."
The issue goes well beyond livestock. Limerick farmer Jimmy O’Donnell said every dairy farmer in his area - at the heart of the Golden Vale - has had something stolen in the last year.
'Our farm is our factory’
Mr O’Donnell has personally had a chainsaw, a drill and an angle grinder stolen, as well as drive shafts taken off machines. One day, after filling his tractor with diesel, at a cost of €200, he returned to discover diesel had been robbed.
"It’s not fair that we feel in danger coming into our own workspace from outside individuals. We don't know where they came from, what they're doing," Mr O’Donnell, who is the chairperson of the Limerick branch of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) said.
He said the experience leaves farmers feeling exposed in their own homes.
"You know somebody has violated your space. What people need to remember is that our farm is our factory, but it's also our home... we need to feel safe."
Superintendent Corbett agrees, saying that "criminals rely on speed, darkness, and opportunity" to carry out robberies, adding that "technology is the one factor that can eliminate all three of those."
‘Frightening experience’
While the use of CCTV on farms is increasingly commonplace, Mr O’Donnell in Limerick is among a number who have taken to using drones to try to spot unwanted intruders on their lands.
"It’s easier to send a drone down the fields if we see people on the land than it is to go and challenge them," he said.
He added that it was a "frightening experience" when he previously faced up to groups of trespassers on his farmland near Kilmallock.
"It’s a tiny drone. It will travel a kilometre away from me and it will video what’s going on. They [trespassers] will know it’s up there and some of them will try to throw sticks at it. They don’t like it. It is a great deterrent," Mr O’Donnell added.
Other farmers said that they believe intruders often come onto their lands under the guise that they are hunting, to scope the place out ahead of a returning to rob it later.
Many are investing in security devices to protect their property and retrieve it if it is stolen.
Alan Daly, and his daughter Alanna, keep over 50 cattle and 300 sheep on their 400-acre organic farm on the shores of Lough Mask, near Ballinrobe, Co Mayo.
After more than 50 of Alan’s pedigree sheep were taken in 2022, he asked his friend Pat Shannon - a retired garda detective - to investigate.
The sheep were recovered and a new company was launched out of that investigation.
"Security on farms in Ireland needs a mindset change. We need to go away from the day where we have a gate secured with baling twine," Mr Shannon told Prime Time. He now runs CDA Livestock Monitoring.
"We need to put smart devices in to give us warnings that there's an intruder on the premises. To give you warnings that your tractor has been moved, your quad has been taken... If your sheep are leaving the farm, you need to know."
Mr Shannon’s company uses GPS technology to track stolen livestock and machinery. A device is fitted to a farmer’s cow, sheep or horse, then an invisible geo-fence is set up on a computer system.
"Once that tracker leaves the geo-fence area, you get an alert to your phone to tell you that the sheep or cow has left the farm," Mr Shannon said.
It can then be tracked over the following period.
"The option we have here is we can pursue at a safe distance without engaging. The main thing is do not intercept. It's not your job to get involved. That's the job solely for the guards," Mr Shannon said.
He said he has successfully retrieved sheep and cattle as far away as the Donegal-Derry border for farmers in Mayo.
Other companies like ProTracs, in Limerick, use tracking technology to monitor machinery rather than livestock.
A representative told Prime Time it has tracked stolen assets from Ireland to Eastern Europe, West Africa, Central Africa, and United Arab Emirates in recent years.
GPS theft
In 2024, there was a spate of thefts of high-value GPS equipment from tractors on Irish farms. The systems are commonly used by tillage and potato farmers.
Lithuanian criminal gangs are suspected of involvement.
The robberies followed a 2023 investigation by police in Lithuania during which €8 million worth of GPS systems from tractors were seized in a basement of a house in a residential area in Kaunas, the country’s second city.
"Some of these GPS units came from Ireland," says Gabrielé Navickaite, an investigative journalist with 15min.lt, an online news site which covered the story.
"Those GPS units and other farm machinery parts are going from Western Europe through several gangs and taken to Eastern European countries like Poland and they are ending up in the USA or Russian markets," she said.
"The main thing with the GPS systems is that they are small and worth a lot. They are easy to steal, easy to transport and easy to sell."
She says the Lithuanian law enforcement sources she has spoken to believe "the penalties are too low" in Western Europe for such crimes.
"The big problem is that in Western European countries the penalties are not big. For example, if a man steals GPS devices worth €100,000, they are getting, four or five months in prison," she said.
Under-reporting
Farmers and industry figures told Prime Time that machinery and livestock theft is also going under-reported.
Mr Sheerin said that most farmers he knows have suffered the theft of sheep, but "most don’t report them."
"It’s pointless to the extent that – what can the guards do? The guards know that once these guys get away and get away to a shed, they will replace them with their own tags."
"There's certainly an element of underreporting," according to Superintendent Corbett.
"We would appeal to the public and especially to people in rural communities to report it, if you don't report it, we can't investigate it and we can't allocate resources towards it. It's vitally important that people report crime," he said.
An Garda Síochána say livestock theft is happening across the country. While there is no geographical hotspot, it is highest in Donegal, which has 11% of overall reported livestock theft, followed by Cork and Galway on 8% each.
Most reports of stolen farm machinery in the last four years have been in the Clare and Tipperary garda divisions.
Eighty-one tractors were stolen in the four years from 2022 to 2025. Twenty-two of them were stolen last year.
"They're watching farms, they're studying, they're coming in at the right times. They know where cameras are"
Around one third of all tractors robbed since 2022 had keys left in the ignition or in the cabs, according to Superintendent Corbett.
He is asking farmers to ensure they secure their property to make it more difficult for criminals to steal them, adding that reports of robbed machinery made to Gardaí dropped from 212 in 2024, to 132 last year.
Vehicle theft
Carnaross Mart on the Meath-Cavan border is one of the busiest livestock marts in the country. Most mart goers that spoke to Prime Time said they were either victims of farm theft or knew victims.
The theft of jeeps was the most common concern among those at the mart. The manager Pádraig McElroy has personally been a victim. He came out of work one evening to find his jeep had been stolen.
"It was there one minute, gone the next. I rang the guards, and it was seen on local CCTV cameras, but unfortunately, it was never found," Mr McElroy said.
"Most men that I know in this day and age have trackers, and hopefully they do get them back, but I'd say 90% of them when they're gone, they're gone," he added.
Another farmer at the mart told Prime Time that thieves are running "sophisticated" operations.
"They're watching farms, they're studying, they're coming in at the right times. They know where cameras are. They're getting around any security that you may have in place," he said.
Smaller items that are stolen can end up anywhere from online marketplaces to car boot sales.
At 6am on a weekend morning Prime Time went to one market in a field in the east of the country where some victims of farm theft said they understood their stolen equipment had previously been sold.
There were dozens of people buying and selling goods - which included an array of tools and machinery.
When an undercover researcher asked the price of some power tools he was told they would be less than half the price in the shops.
Among the items on sale were chainsaws, angle grinders, drills and hedge trimmers.
‘Soul-destroying’
For victims like Jimmy O’Donnell in Kilmallock, the scale of theft is becoming a significant problem.
"If you're a farmer and you're buying something that's one quarter of the price... you know it's stolen... All you're doing is robbing your own people"
"Security is a must at this stage for your own safety. Farmers should invest in a really good security system. If you spend €2,500, you'll have an excellent system," he said.
When it comes to livestock, he says the impact goes far beyond financial loss.
"If you steal stock, you're not just stealing an animal. You're stealing six months, 12 months, two years of work… It's a huge investment. It’s a massive hit for the farmer. It's soul destroying," he said.
"We live for our animals. We live with them. They live with us… They're part of the family. But the idea that someone coming in, literally stealing them and probably illegally butchering them is barbaric.
Supt Corbett encouraged farmers to contact An Garda Síochána about meeting crime prevention officers, who he said will call out free of charge to assist with devising a security plan.
From farmers who spoke to Prime Time, there is a clear message for people who buy stolen goods.
"If you're a farmer and you're buying something that's one quarter of the price... you know it's stolen," Mr O’Donnell said.
"All you're doing is robbing your own people, and you're aiding the very people that are going to rob you going down the line. It's as simple as that."
Conor McMorrow and producer/director Lucinda Glynn’s report ‘Farm Theft – Open Season’ is broadcast on the 19 February edition of Prime Time at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
