There have been “notable” decreases in the number of homicides, burglaries, robberies and kidnappings over recent months, according to the latest crime figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The number of recorded crime incidents for most offences fell in the year to March of this year, compared to the same period in 2024.
The most significant drops were for homicide, which was down 34 per cent over the period and robbery, extortion and hijacking offences, down 8 per cent.
However, there were increases in the number of crime incidents of sexual offences (15 per cent), public order and other social code offences (5 per cent), attempts/threats to murder, assaults, harassment (3 per cent) and weapons and explosive offences (3 per cent).
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Victims of crime incidents of attempts/threats to murder, assaults and harassments fell by 1 per cent to 5,370 in the first quarter of this year from the same period in 2024.
The number of male victims fell by 3 per cent and the number of female victims rose by 1 per cent.
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Victims aged 60 years or more showed the largest decrease over the year.
Male victims in this age cohort fell by 13 per cent and female victims fell by 8 per cent.
Other notable changes were a fall of 6 per cent in male victims both aged under 18 years and 45-59 years at the time of the incident.
For female victims, there were increases of 3 per cent and 2 per cent respectively for those in the 30-44 and 45-59 year age groups.
The CSO said over the four-year period from 2022 to 2025, the largest percentage changes in the number of recorded crime incidents have been for theft, robbery, extortion and hijacking offences.
In the year to March of this year, there were 74,102 recorded crime incidents of theft, up by 23,181 incidents, or 46 per cent, since the same period in 2022.
The number of crime incidents of robbery, extortion and hijacking offences rose by 24 per cent over the same period.
Weapons and explosive offences are up 14 per cent from 2,575 incidents in 2022 to 2,943 this year.
