Burglary rates in Ireland have fallen at one of fastest rates in Europe
Seán McCárthaigh
Burglary rates in Ireland have fallen at a faster rate than almost everywhere else in the EU over the past decade, according to new figures published by the European Commission.
Official crime figures for EU countries for 2024 – the latest year for which comparable data is available – show a strong downward trend in the annual number of burglaries in the overwhelming majority of member states since 2014.
The combined annual number of burglary offences across the EU has fallen from 1.83 million in 2014 in the 24 member states for which figures are published to 1.17 million in 2024 – a reduction of 36 per cent.
In Ireland, the number of burglaries dropped over the same time period from almost 27,700 to just over 9,300 – a decrease of 66 per cent.
Only four other EU countries experienced a higher rate of decline in burglary figures – Bulgaria, Lithuania, Greece, and the Netherlands.
Latvia was the sole EU member state to record an increase in burglaries over the past decade.
Figures released earlier this year by the Central Statistics Office showed burglaries plummeted even further in 2025, with numbers down 13 per cent nationwide to fewer than 8,500.
The EU figures also reveal that Ireland has a much lower burglary rate than many other countries, particularly in Western Europe.
Overall, Ireland was ranked with the 13th highest rate of burglaries on a per capita basis in 2024, with 174 per 100,000 population.
The rate ten years earlier was more than three times higher at 597 burglaries per 100,000, when Ireland had the 8th highest number of burglaries proportionately in the EU.
Among the countries with burglary rates more than three times that of Ireland in 2024 were Austria, Sweden, and Luxembourg.
In contrast, the lowest burglary rates in the EU are found in Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.
Figures published by the European Commission provide evidence that overall crime levels in Ireland are not unusually high or low compared to the rest of Europe.
With 37 cases of intentional homicide recorded in 2024, Ireland had the joint 6th lowest murder rate in the EU with 0.69 cases per 100,000 population.
The three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had the highest homicide rates, while Luxembourg had the lowest.
However, some crime trends are upwards with the number of serious assaults in the Republic increasing over the past decade by 85% to 5,865 in 2024 – the 5th highest rate in the EU.
Like most countries in the EU, Ireland has also experienced a sharp rise in sexual offences, including rape, over the past decade with numbers more than doubling.
The number of rapes reported in the Republic jumped from 480 in 2014 to 1,040 ten years later.
Those figures rank Ireland with the 8th highest rate for rape offences in the EU, with 19 cases per 100,000, behind countries like Sweden, France, and Finland.
The number of theft offences – the most common category of crime – in Ireland has fluctuated over the past decade but has increased every year since 2021 to over 71,400 cases in 2024.
It places Ireland in 9th position overall for thefts with 1,335 cases per 100,000, with rates more than twice as high found in Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
The EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, noted that the number of police-recorded crimes varies widely across the EU, even after adjusting for population size.
It cautioned that variations can stem from differences in legislation, police recording practices, and reporting behaviour, which can limit comparisons on official crime figures.
