SUBSTANTIALLY MORE burglaries are reported in the west Dublin suburbs of Tallaght and Blanchardstown than anywhere else in the State, the most comprehensive set of burglary statistics published has revealed.
The number of burglariesreported in Tallaght is large compared with the number of reports in the rest of the State, with 922 offences investigated by gardaí in the area last year.
That figure was almost 50 per cent higher than the second-worst affected area of Blanchardstown, where 628 burglary offences were recorded.
And it was close to three times the number of burglary offences recorded in Waterford station, which, at 377, was the third-highest nationally last year.
The Central Statistics Office publishes figures for crime trends nationally every quarter. That data has now been made available in an interactive format prepared by the All-Island Research Observatory (Airo), part of NUI Maynooth.
Those trends are being published this week in a special Irish Times series on crime.
The burglary data outlined today reveals many areas not regarded as having high crime rates feature near the top of the burglary table across the State. Rathfarnham station in south Dublin recorded 347 burglaries last year, the seventh-highest of the 704 stations whose crime rates have been collated. However, when ranked in terms of overall crime, that station was much further down, in 27th position.
Clontarf station in north Dublin recorded 333 burglary offences in 2011, putting it ninth on the list. Dundrum station on Dublin’s southside had the 15th highest number of burglaries reported, with 298 cases.
Dundrum is the station in whose catchment area Minister for Justice Alan Shatter lives, and gardaí from the station investigated a break-in at Mr Shatter’s home earlier this year. The number of burglaries reported to gardaí in Dundrum has risen by 12.4 per cent since 2007.
Crime nationally has fallen by 13 per cent since its peak in 2008 but burglary rates nationally have increased by 15 per cent since that year.
Garda sources said some neighbourhoods in south Dublin and other mainly middle-class parts of the State have seen burglary rates higher than general crime rates in those areas.
Other Garda sources said the intense focus of the force’s dedicated anti-burglary drive – Operation Fiacla – over the past six months had already begun to drive burglary rates down in some areas.
