There's been a significant reduction in serious crime, according to the latest annual figures released today by the Central Statistics Office.
Homicide and related offenses were down by a quarter in 2025 when compared to the previous year.
But there were small increases in public order and drugs offenses, with weapons and explosives offenses up by 6%.
The Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan was asked about crime rates this morning.
Well, I think people can feel safe and part of the reason I think people can feel safer is because visibility of Guaradi in our cities and towns has increased very significantly.
I want to see that happen right across the board throughout the country, but certainly from seeing the high visibility patrols and Dublin, Cork and Nimric, it's having a very significant impact on the public.
They feel safer when they see more Guaradi in the streets and that's what government policy is.
Let's have a word now with our crime correspondent Paul Reynolds, who's been looking at those figures.
Paul, what are the main decreases?
Well, there's been decreases in 12 out of the 15 categories of serious crime Rachel.
Homicide related offenses down 25%. That's the largest drop.
But if you drill into those figures, the number of murders remain the same at 35.
For the two years, the number of manslaughter also remain the same at 5.
The overall reduction in that figure is due to a drop in cases of dangerous driving causing death.
That's down by over 46%.
Now murder attempts also increased by 38%. But the number there remained low at just 18 cases.
Kidnapping and related offenses, they're down by 21%, robbery by 11%, burglary by 13%.
But yet there were still 8,469 reports of burglaries and related offenses last year.
It's a drop of 1279, but it's still a significant number.
As well, thefts were down 3%, but again, if you look at the figures directly,
there were 73,000 reports of thefts last year from shops, cars and people.
Drugs offenses remain static, but more than 10,000 people were caught in possession of drugs.
And another 5,000 were called dealing drugs.
And there's been an increase in people called dealing drug dealing.
That's up by 13%.
Overall, sex offenses were down 9% across all sex offenses.
But if you again drill into the specific offenses and if you take the most serious offense rape,
the number of men and women rape last year actually increased 31 more people were subject to that crime last year.
Men and women, the figure in total is 1,016 people.
