There’s been a fall in the number of burglary offences recorded in Clare over the past decade.
The Central Statistics Office has resumed publishing crime statistics, introducing the category “Under Reservation” to reflect problems with the data used to compile the statistics.
The drop in burglaries locally comes despite the closure of nine Garda Stations across the county five years ago.
For the first time in over a year, the Central Statistics Office has published crime figures.
The CSO had stopped publishing the numbers last year, due to concerns over the accuracy of the information provided by Gardaí.
The stats released this morning include revisions back to 2003, but they’re published in a new ‘under reservation’ category, with the CSO saying that it still has quality concerns.
The Gardaí have been criticised internally and externally for the misclassification of homicide and a major review is underway. The CSO has said that there’s likely to be further revisions once this review is completed.
An Garda Síochána has welcomed the publication of the figures – Deputy Commissioner John Twomey says improvements have been made in how gardaí are counting crimes.
Today’s figures show that nationally, there were 234 incidents between 2003 and 2016 that should have been recorded as homicides.
The vast majority of these were road deaths that should have been recorded as dangerous driving causing death.
Here in Clare, recorded crime incidents have generally been on a downward trend over the past decade.
The most notable figure perhaps is the drop in burglary and related offences recorded in the county, from 129 in the last quarter of 2007 to 55 in the same period last year.
There was a spike in this type of crime across the county between 2014 and 2016, after the closure of nine Garda Stations, but numbers have fallen again, with 30 fewer break-ins at the end of last year, than there were 5 years ago.
Across 2017, the Ennis area had the highest number of recorded burglaries at 84, this was followed by 28 in the Killaloe District, 26 in Kilkee, 10 each in Scarriff and Ennistymon and 1 each in the Tulla and Ballyvaughan districts.
There were 783 thefts and related offences across the county, 115 cases of fraud or deception, 312 controlled drug offences and 606 public order or other social code offences.
Full details are available here.
