Four out of five tourists who have fallen victim to crime in Dublin say they would still recommend the city to other visitors, according to a survey by the Tourist Victim Support Service (TVSS). The service, based at Garda headquarters in Harcourt Street, has assisted 200 tourists who have been robbed this year. It offers tea and a sympathetic ear, as well as practical help such as cancelling credit cards and travellers' cheques, ensuring that travel tickets are reissued, securing new travel visas and providing meal vouchers and emergency overnight accommodation.
The staff work closely with the Garda and the tourist sector to minimise the damage caused by the largely drug-related crimes to the victims' holiday plans and their images of Ireland.
"We see ourselves as an after-care service. We hope to help people to go away with something good to say about Ireland despite a bad experience," says Trasy Doran, the co-ordinator of the TVSS.
The service opens office hours seven days a week during the summer and is run by 20 volunteers and five staff members. It deals with tourists who are referred to it by gardai.
The TVSS survey, carried out among tourists who were victims of crime last summer, found full satisfaction with its service, according to Doran. Ninety-two per cent of the victims said they felt the Garda response was good and 82 per cent said they would still recommend Dublin as a holiday destination.
"Dublin has always been pretty low down on violent city lists," says Doran. "It has just got the regular problems of a major city. Tourists can come in to us feeling angry because they were taken advantage of or because they had all their valuables in one bag and they know themselves that they shouldn't have. But then they just calm down after the initial anger or shock and see that it's just part of life at the moment."
The number of victim referrals to the TVSS this year is down by half on last year, according to Doran. There were 50 referrals last month, compared with 97 for July 1996.
This decline could be due to several factors, including a reduction in the number of visitors to the city, a stronger Garda presence and the increased use of close circuit television in some city centre areas, says Doran.
She said the majority of incidents are opportunistic and there are no reports of organised criminal scams which are encountered by tourists in some other capital cities.
`The crime here is really so drug-related that the criminals haven't gone to extraordinary lengths yet to get money. Just £30 to £40 will do them and if they see tourists wandering around, they know they will have money on them," she says.
There have, however, been several syringe attacks on tourists by addicts this year. In one incident over the August bank holiday weekend, a drug addict entered a female hostel dormitory and threatened a Finnish woman in her 20s with a blood-filled syringe. She handed over £120 in cash.
"The woman was fine by the time she got to us but she was fairly amazed that it had happened," says Doran.
A Northern couple in their 30s and their six-year-old child were also threatened at syringe-point by youths in Phoenix Park last month. As the thieves made off in a car with £500 in cash, a mobile phone and jewellery, they held on to the man who was dragged for several metres along the ground.
Of course not every horror holiday incident has an unhappy ending. One involved a New Zealand backpacker whose bag, containing his passport, address book and travel documents was stolen from a hostel in Gardiner Street. So determined was he to find his belongings that he scoured the area with gardai for almost a week. After numerous searches, he discovered the bag and the documents at the rear of a car park.
"That was amazing - that he just didn't give up and the backpack was found when it could have so easily ended up in the Liffey," says Doran.
For the Tourist Victim Support Service tel: 01 4785295. Victim Support Service's 24-hour helpline is 054-76222
