Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 10 Mar 1999

Vol. 502 No. 1

Written Answers. - Crime Levels.

Thomas P. Broughan

Question:

55 Mr. Broughan asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if he will request the Central Statistics Office or another independent body to collate and audit crime statistics in view of recent concerns by victims about the reliability of these statistics. [4755/99]

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. O'Donoghue)

I am satisfied that the crime statistics published in the annual reports of the Garda Síochána are accurate reflections of the level and nature of crimes reported or known to the Garda in the year to which they refer. I am also satisfied that crime levels have decreased dramatically in recent years.

I agree with the Deputy that it is useful to have another way of gauging crime levels and that is why my Department developed a crime and victimisation module for inclusion in the CSO's quarterly national household survey for the last quarter of 1998. The main topics covered included the incidence, type, location and other relevant aspects of crime in the past year; whether crimes were reported to the Garda, household security, and people's perceptions in relation to crime and safety.

I understand the relevant information was collected in the three month period from September to November 1998 from a sample of 39,000 households. I am informed that the results should be available in the middle of this year, subject to satisfactory progress with processing and analysing the data.

Under the Statistics Act, 1993, the CSO has authority to co-ordinate statistics compiled by some public bodies. In the justice area – courts, prisons and the Garda Síochána – it does not have that right and as such they compile the reports themselves. Apart from the quarterly national household survey, there is no need for the Central Statistics Office to become directly involved in the collection of crime statistics. We should not underestimate the scale of the operation involved in collecting crime statistics given that there are over 700 Garda stations in the country.

While victimisation surveys are a useful complement to police statistics, the two sets of data are not directly comparable. Both types of information suffer from methodological difficulties – for instance, the everyday terms used by crime surveys differ from the legal terminology used by the Garda. I look forward with interest to the publication of the CSO crime survey, which will provide much useful information about crime in Ireland.