Ireland is ranked as one of Europe's "hotspots" for crime in an EU survey that questions whether Garda statistics accurately reflect crime rates.
The Burden of Crime in Europe survey, which was co-funded by the European Commission, found 22.1 per cent of Irish people said they fell victim to common crimes such as assault, robbery or theft in 2004. This was the highest response recorded in the 18 EU states surveyed by international polling company Gallup.
Ireland was also ranked highest in Europe for the percentage of people that had experienced assaults with force (2.5 per cent), sexual assaults (3.8 per cent) and robberies (2.5 per cent).
The survey results suggest a much higher crime rate in the Republic than the official Garda statistics, which reported 103,360 crimes in 2004.
Garda figures suggest one in 40 Irish people was a victim of crime compared to one in five in the Gallup poll.
Prof Jan Van Dijk, of Tilburg University, who worked on the survey, said the gap between the official statistics and the survey results was so enormous that there must be something wrong with the system of reporting crimes in the Republic.
He said the Government should introduce a large-scale victimisation survey that could properly monitor people's experiences with crime.
He said this had been introduced in the Netherlands about 30 years ago and there was an ongoing debate in Britain about "sloppy" police statistics. This debate hadn't happened yet in Ireland, he added. However, the Department of Justice questioned the methodology of the survey, which was conducted using telephone interviews with a sample of 2,000 people.
"This is a small sample for a victimisation survey and if you are not a victim of crime you have less motivation to stay on the phone to complete the interview," said a Department of Justice spokeswoman.
The report on the EU survey notes that just 41.8 per cent of Irish people telephoned by Gallup, responded to the questions.
However, Robert Manchin, chairman and managing director of Gallup Europe, defended the survey results, noting that the company had undertaken a second survey six months after the first poll to check the figures. This came up with almost exactly the same results, he added.
Meanwhile, the EU-wide survey found that crime rates had fallen in Europe since they reached a peak of 21 per cent in 1995. The EU average in 2004 was 14.8 per cent. The report highlighted that the ageing population in Europe could play a part in reducing the overall crime levels as young people are more likely to engage in crime.
Apart from Ireland (22.1 per cent), which topped the survey, Britain (21 per cent), Estonia (20.2 per cent), the Netherlands (19.8 per cent) and Denmark (19.3 per cent) were the states where citizens experienced the highest rates of common crime. Hungary (10per cent) and Portugal (10.4 per cent) had the lowest number of crimes.
The EU average rate was 14.9 per cent in 2004, according to the survey of 41,776 people.