Burglaries increased by 10 per cent last year while homicide offences fell by 12 per cent, according to new statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
In the 12 months up to October 2024, the number of burglary offences rose by 878 to 9,981. The increase was driven by incidents of non-aggravated burglary, meaning burglary which did not involve the use or threat of violence.
During the same period there were 75 instances of homicide and related offences, a category which includes murder, attempted murder and dangerous driving causing death.
Theft type offences rose by seven per cent to 5,331 incidents, driven by an increase in shoplifting offences. Six out of every ten incidents in the increase in thefts related to shoplifting.
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Kidnapping-type offences rose by 16 per cent to 168, weapons and explosives offences by 11 per cent to 2,970 and public order type offences by three per cent to 30,092.
There was a 6 per cent drop in drug offences and a 1 per cent drop in sexual offences during the period.
The CSO said drug offences were at their lowest recorded level since 2020 while theft, assault and harassment type offence were at their highest.
The southern region of the country saw the largest decrease in drug offences, an eleven per cent drop. It also had the largest increase in burglaries, with a 23 per cent increase. The smallest increase, five per cent, was recorded in Dublin.
The CSO said 59 per cent of victims of threats to murder, assaults and harassment were male.
It is the first release of crime statistics since last Autumn after the CSO temporarily suspended publication due to issues with the reporting of fraud statistics.
The issue related to a large backlog of cases relating to fraud which was skewing the data. A new mechanism requiring banks and other financial institutions to report instances of fraud came into effect in August 2023.
This led to a large increase in fraud notifications, creating a backlog of thousands of cases which the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau is currently working through.
Some of these cases may have already been reported to the Garda and would have been represented in previous CSO releases. However, some consumers may have just reported the fraud to their financial institutions.
The CSO said 11,561 fraud cases were recorded during the most recent reporting period. However, it was unable to provide accurate points of comparison from previous years due to the data issue.
