The chairperson of the Donegal Local Community Safety Partnership has said two sex crimes each week in the county is two too many.
County councillor Gerry McMonagle was reacting to the latest crime figures released by senior gardai in the county this week.
The figures were released at the latest meeting of the partnership at County House in Lifford.
Letterkenny-based Superintendent Siobhan Mollohan gave a breakdown of crime figures in Donegal from March, 2025 up until the end of last month.
Among the figures released included statistics for sex-related crimes in the county during that time.
Cllr Gerry McMonagle, chairperson of the Local Community Safety Partnership.
The figures showed a general decrease in such crimes with the number of rapes decreasing from 52 down to 44 in the past year while the number of sex assaults reduced from 149 to 79.
The overall number of domestic incidents was also down almost 7% from 1573 to 1474.
Reacting to the figures, Councillor McGonagle said that while any reduction in such figures was welcome, more work needed to be done in the area of sex-related crimes.
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He told Donegal Daily “These figures show that there were more than two sex related crimes in Donegal each week in the past year and that is two too many.
“Each and every one of these crimes should be treated with the seriousness they deserve and and I know local gardai treat them that way.
“Each and every one of these crimes are life-changing for the victims and I still feel our figures for sex-related crime are too high.”
Councillor McGonagle said he feels the figures need to be “drilled down into” to find other information which could be used to prevent similar crimes from reoccurring.
He added “We should be able to find out when these crimes happened, to examine if it was daylight or at night, during the week or at weekends, in public or in private.
“All this information could help us in tackling this issue and hopefully preventing them from happening to other people.”
He said he suspected the number of victims of sexual crime was certainly higher and encouraged anybody who has been a victim to come forward.
“We must never keep sexual crime out of the spotlight because we have seen the number of lives it has destroyed.
“We will probably never know the true figure of those who are victims of such crimes but we must never stop highlighting it,” he said.