Fraud has risen by almost half as criminals increasingly resort to online and phone scams, new figures from the Central Statistics Office suggest.
The CSO figures show fraud, kidnapping, theft and attempt assaults are up substantially in the 12 months between the end of June 2021 and the end of June this year.
The number of fraud offences increased by 43 per cent from 11,325 to 16,202.
CSO statistician Jim Dalton said the increase in fraud offences was largely driven by unauthorised transactions and attempts to obtain personal or banking information online or by phone.
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Theft and related offences are up in the same time from 22.6 per cent, kidnapping and related offences by 36.3 per cent and attempted assaults ranging from attempted murder to harassment are up by 20.6 per cent.
At the same time, murders fell by 38 per cent from 64 to 40. Controlled drugs offences were down by 26.8 per cent and weapons and explosives offences were down by 11.2 per cent.
Male victims of attempted violence increased by 20 per cent in quarter two from a year earlier, compared to a 6 per cent increase in female victims.
The CSO also reported on a Garda analysis of cancelled Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) incidents focusing on the most serious high risk crimes dating back to 2019.
This arose out of claims that gardaí were not answering 999 calls.
The internal investigation found that out of around 6,000 serious incidents in 2019, 141 would have resulted in a criminal incident being recorded on Pulse, the gardaí's internal computer system. All 141 incidents have now been added to Pulse.
The CSO concluded that the number of unrecorded CAD incidents is negligible in the context of the overall crime statistics for the period.
Mr Dalton cautioned that the comparative figures between 2020 and 2021 had to be seen in the context of the restrictions imposed by Covid-19.
