Crime victims have become less likely to report incidents to An Garda Síochána, as they believe the force could not or would not act, according to new research.
The number of people who said they had experienced theft, fraud or assaults in the past year has nearly doubled since 2019, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) report shows.
However, a CSO household survey examining public perceptions and experience of criminality found a rising number are deciding not to report a large proportion of the crimes they experience.
The reporting of personal crime – thefts, fraud and assault – fell from 39 per cent in 2019, when the survey was last carried out, to 30 per cent last year.
The perception that gardaí would not or could not take actions to combat the crime, or that the incident was too minor to report, were the most common reasons for people choosing not to report crimes.
Less than half the incidents of household crime – burglary, attempted burglary, or vandalism – are now reported, the findings show. The reporting rate fell from 59 per cent in 2019 to just 47 per cent last year.
The proportion of people who said they had their car stolen, or an attempt was made to steal it, increased from 3 per cent in 2019 to 4 per cent last year.
The findings point to a significant increase in rates of violent and non-violent thefts, as well as fraud and assault.
In 2019, 10 per cent of people had been the victim of one of these “personal” crimes, but that number had nearly doubled to 19 per cent last year.
Men (21 per cent) were more likely to suffer personal crimes than women (17 per cent). However, women respondents reported significantly higher levels of fear of being physically assaulted than men.
When the 2019 survey was published, half of all respondents (51 per cent) said they did not worry at all about suffering crime. That figure had fallen to 32 per cent last year, with the share of people constantly or often worried about crime increasing by 8 percentage points to 23 per cent.
Just over half of the respondents said they felt safe while walking in their local areas, with a further third saying they felt “fairly safe”.
The perceived effectiveness of the Garda has fallen notably, with less than half of people saying they believed the Garda had been effective at tackling crime at a national level.
Across the State, 51 per cent of respondents feel the force is either “not very effective” (38 per cent) or “not effective at all” (13 per cent). This compares with just 35 per cent of people who felt this way in 2019, CSO statistician Jim Dalton said.
On a local level, people still feel gardaí are effective (57 per cent), down from 68 per cent in 2019.
Dalton noted that just 43 per cent of people feel very confident or quite confident that the Irish system was bringing people who commit crime to justice.
“This represented a fall from 46 per cent in 2019,” he said.
The CSO survey, carried out in mid-2025, received some 7,654 valid responses.
In a statement, An Garda Síochána said it was aware of the statistics publication and noted that national and international studies show that “Ireland is a low crime country” but added “that doesn’t mean An Garda Síochána takes that for granted”.
“An Garda Síochána repeatedly urges anyone who has been a victim of crime to report it to us. It will be taken seriously, dealt with professionally and it will be investigated,” the spokesperson said.
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The statement pointed to the Garda Public Attitudes Survey, published in November 2025.
“According to that survey, 88% of respondents, which amounts to over 12,000 people, trust An Garda Síochána,” it added. “An Garda Síochána is one of the most trusted police services in the world based on our tradition of policing by consent. An Garda Síochána polices in the interests of all people and all communities.”