Opposition parties have said the Government and the Minister for Justice are losing the fight on crime following an 8 per cent rise in headline crime rates in the first quarter of the year.
Fine Gael said the Garda figures, published by Mr McDowell today, show he has "lost the fight against crime and has failed in his primary duty to protect the public".
Justice spokesman Jim O'Keeffe said Mr McDowell's term as Minister was nearly over but that the crime situation was "worse than ever".
"Serious crime is up by 7 per cent and has smashed through the 100,000 mark in the last 12 months," Mr O'Keeffe said.
"Michael McDowell's legacy as justice minister will be crime rates up, detection rates down and a country where the public live in fear of random acts of violence, where gun crime in the cities is an everyday reality and where criminals appear to act with impunity."
Mr O'Keeffe said the Minister's legacy was a Garda force that has to divert resources from regular policing duties to tackle "the menace of gangland".
"This has led to a sharp drop in detection rates, from 44 per cent in 1998 to 35 per cent in 2004. Meanwhile, 85 per cent of burglaries are going undetected, 65 per cent of thefts and a staggering 30 per cent of homicides."
The Garda Commissioner acknowledged earlier this week that drugs-related gun crime now requires so much of the force's resources that detection rates for other crimes have suffered.
Labour's justice spokesman Brendan Howlin said the increase in headline crime demonstrated that the Government has "failed to get to grips with Ireland's crime wave".
"Following the series of incidents such as the murder of Donna Cleary at a party in Dublin, shoot-outs on the M50 between rival drug gangs, and ongoing thefts, robberies and burglaries, it is of little surprise that today's statistics show such an increase in headline crime.
"Clearly the current strategy of Minister McDowell and his Government are not working. Some of the figures in these statistics are particularly shocking: murder is up 71 per cent in comparison to the same period last year following the series of gangland shootings and incidents that occurred over recent months."