MORE than one person in three living in Ireland does not feel safe walking in his or her own neighbourhood after dark, a survey commissioned by EU has revealed.
Within the European Union, people living in the former East Germany feel most at risk from crime. Almost two people out of three are afraid to go out after dark, the survey said.
Next in line are residents of Spain (39 per cent), Ireland (37 per cent), Portugal (34 per cent) and West Germany (34 per cent), according to the survey, presented to a seminar on urban delinquency and its links with drugs dependence.
The survey, based on interviews with 16,000 EU residents, showed that while EU citizens may not feel any safer than US citizens, they are still more at ease than their neighbours in eastern Europe, where one in two is scared to go out at night.
"Comparing the rates of global regions show that the EU safety level in urban areas is similar to that in North America and Asia," the European Commission said in a statement on the survey, which was prepared at the Dutch State University of Leiden.
It said that contacts with drug scenes increased the fear. Fourteen per cent of those interviewed said they had seen people openly dealing with drugs, found syringes in parks or been victims of drugs linked violent crime.
But the survey showed that people were also put off by teenagers loitering on street corners, litter on the streets, graffiti, beggars and tramps, along with abandoned houses and broken windows.
While 44 per cent of women were afraid, only 19 per cent of men were, although the survey admitted men might be too macho to admit that they were scared.
The fear increased according to the size of the city and was more prevalent in younger and older people and among people with less money.
"The unequal distribution of fear... can be illustrated by a comparison between two extreme groups. Of the young males living in villages 9 per cent feel unsafe. By contrast 62 per cent of women of 55 and older living in the Union's largest cities feel unsafe," it said.