There has been a 3 per cent drop in serious crime in the first half of the year, compared with the same period last year, but the number of murders has risen by 35 per cent, according to the provisional quarterly figures. Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent, reports.
Rapes have also fallen significantly, with a drop of 26 per cent, but there was an increase of 9 per cent in serious (Section 4) rapes and of 41 per cent in unlawful carnal knowledge, usually of a child under the age of consent.
The provisional figures cover "headline" crimes, which include murder and serious assaults, thefts and burglaries, possession of drugs and firearms, and sexual offences.
Arrests for possession of drugs rose between the first six months of 2004 and 2005, and possession of firearms rose slightly.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said he was worried about the rise in the number of violent deaths, linked to gangland crime. These rose from 17 in the first six months of 2004 to 23 in the first six months of this year.
"If you peddle death by dealing in drugs, killing people who don't pay you or who get in your way is a minor moral problem," he said. Internationally, drug dealers hired other people to do their killing for them, which made their crimes harder to detect, he said.
He congratulated An Garda Síochána for the success of Operation Anvil, set up in May to combat gangland murders, pointing out that there had been no such murders since May.
He said 433 people had been arrested and the information and intelligence gathered would be of permanent use. He welcomed the drop of 40 per cent in the robbery of cash and goods in transit. A forum had been set up with the cash in transit industry, which had stopped the "race to the bottom" in the quality of this service.
The companies involved were now committed to investment in equipment which could combat robberies. This included satellite tracking of vehicles, and digitally-controlled cash-boxes where the cash could be destroyed if a robbery took place.
Referring to the increase in arrests for the possession of drugs for sale or supply, he said that this resulted from good police work, with an increased volume of supplies being intercepted.
Mr McDowell cautioned about extrapolating too much from the quarterly figures. However, he pointed out that over the past 10 years the trend has been down, especially when the growth in population and urbanisation is taken into account.
"In 1995, with a population of almost 3.6 million people, there were 102,484 headline crimes, or the equivalent of 29 crimes per 1,000 of the population," he said.
"For the 12-month period ending 30 June last, with a population of over four million, there were 97,208 headline crimes, the equivalent of 24 crimes per 1,000 of the population."
He also said that in the lifetime of the current Government the ratio of police to people had increased from one garda for every 335 people to one for every 331, and this would further increase to one for every 298 people by the end of 2006.
Fine Gael spokesman on justice Jim O'Keeffe said the figures showed there were now 500 more headline offences committed each week compared to five years ago, evidence of the Government's failure to deliver on its promise of 2,000 extra gardaí.
Labour Party spokesman Joe Costello said the crime figures made modern Ireland "more akin to downtown Bogota than a modern European capital, such is the extent of gangland murder, assaults and violent crime.
"Aside from serious crime, antisocial behaviour in general continues to be a serious problem, with high levels of casual vandalism and burglaries," he said.
The largest increase in any individual category of crime was for the theft of a bicycle, which rose by 68 per cent. Mr McDowell said he took this quite seriously, as it prevented people from buying and using bicycles, and he had asked the Garda Commissioner to set up a special unit to deal with it.