Suspects in 40,348 crimes were given bail last year, an increase of almost 5,000 on 2022, according to Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald who described the figures as “shocking”.
Calling for action on bail laws, she said that, “astonishingly”, 114,655 crime suspects were out on bail over the past three years.
Ms McDonald said the figures were released in a parliamentary reply to Sinn Féin’s justice spokesman Matt Carthy. She said the situation with bail “cannot continue”.
She told Taoiseach Micheál Martin that “people won’t tolerate a situation where criminals, people out on bail, are at liberty and free to offend and reoffend again and again”.
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“The bail laws need to be examined with urgency to ensure that they’re being properly applied,” she said.
She asked the Taoiseach to say when the Government will “finally acknowledge and get on top of this issue”.
Mr Martin said he does not know whether she is “proposing wholesale internment of suspects”. He said the figures are “huge” and there must be a focus on people with “a history of crime”.
He said the bail laws have been reformed and will be reformed further. The Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan is looking at the issue, he said, “but there are limits to what can be done”.
“We want to stamp down on crime,” Mr Martin said, adding: “we’re very intolerant of people committing crime.” But, he said, there cannot be a “wholesale system where everyone who is charged is locked up”.
The figures released to Mr Carthy showed the largest number of suspects (9,340) on bail were for crimes committed in the north inner city, classed as the north central Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR), followed by 4,514 in the south central DMR.
In the north Dublin DMR 2,764 people are on bail, while 2,711 are on bail in the west Dublin DMR.
In Meath/Westmeath 1,792 suspects received bail, compared to 1,750 in the Limerick region. The lowest number of bail cases was 434 in the Sligo/Leitrim area, with 576 in Mayo/Roscommon/Longford.
In the reply, the Minister stated that, under section 11 of the amended 1984 Criminal Justice Act, “any sentence of imprisonment for an offence committed while on bail shall run consecutive to any sentence for a previous offence”.
If an offence is committed while on bail this “must be treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing and result in a higher sentence”.
In his question Mr Carthy asked the category of offences for which suspects received bail.
The response said data for 2024 indicates the most common offence types committed by offenders on bail were public order/drinking (25 per cent); shop theft (23 per cent); simple possession (6 per cent), relating to persons in possession of a controlled drug for their own personal use; and criminal damage (5 per cent).
