Burglaries 43% lower than pre-virus rates

Recorded incidents of robbery, extortion and hijacking offences were up in Q4 last year, CSO statistics show.

Offences were up from 531 to 2,601 between 2022 and 2023 driven mostly by a rise in blackmail or extortion and robbery.

Crimes of theft and related offences were up by 12%, or by 8,169 to 74,144 incidents over the full year.

Theft from shops

Nearly half (46%) of the increase was due to a growing number of incidents of theft from shops.

Recorded incidents of homicide and related offences were down by 19% from 80 to 65 incidents over the year.

Most of this decrease was accounted for by a fall in the number incidents classed as murder offences.

There were also small increases in:

• Weapons and explosives offences (+5%),
• Damage to property and the environment (+3%) and
• Burglary and related offences (+1%).

Controlled drug offences remained virtually unchanged over the year.

Sexual offences were down 11% to 3,354 reported incidents, while public-order offences were down by 8%, and dangerous or negligent acts dropped by 7%.

Murder attempts or threats, assaults, harassments and related offences fell by 4% in Q4 2023 when compared with Q4 2022.

The number of male victims fell by 4%, while the number of female victims was down by 3%.

Fraud offences down

Recorded crime incidents of fraud, deception and related offences fell by 3% to 11,292 over the year (which was 43% more than the 7,921 incidents in 2019).

The number of recorded crime incidents for this category more than doubled to a high of 17,124 in 2021 before falling to back to 11,689 in 2022.

Statistician Jim Dalton said that burglary offences fell from 16,750 incidents in 2019 to 10,884 in 2020, and then to 8,584 during COVID 2021 public-health restrictions.

The figures rose to 9,465 in 2022.

In 2023, there were 9,545 incidents, but this was 43% less than the levels recorded in 2019.

Rates of violence against males decreased for those under 18 (-14%), and for those between 45-59 (-8%) and for 18-29 (-4%).

However, the number of victims aged 60 or over rose by 5%, while those aged 30-44 went up by 1%.

The number of female victims of assault fell across all age groups, except those aged 60 or more, which were up by 12%.

The highest rate of decrease was for those under 18s (-11%).

For all other age groups, the rate of decrease was between 2% and 3%.

The CSO published its fifth review of the quality of recorded crime statistics in October 2023.

Data quality control

The CSO lifted the ‘under reservation’ designation from crime figures disseminated after Q1 2023, following better quality control assurances for An Garda Síochána data.

“The recorded crime series has been progressively improving over time, with the cumulative impact of the improved data quality, assessment, and assurance measures being seen in a higher data-quality level, as noted in various CSO reviews in recent years,” the organisation said this morning.

However, users should exercise some judgement when using data produced in the earlier years of the recorded crime-time series given the legacy quality issues, the CSO added.

Detections data pre- and post-2018 are not comparable, given the improved governance controls introduced in that year.

The CSO said that it will continue to inform users about the quality of the data in use, and of issues around time-series comparability as they arise.