Garda figures show significant decrease in reported crime this year
Gardaí say there has been a significant decrease in robbery, burglary, violent disorder, crimes against the person and theft offences this year.
Provisional Garda figures for the first three months show a decrease across all property crimes but an increase in organised crime and fraud offences, compared to the same period last year.
Gardaí say these increases are linked to increased reporting and detections.
The official CSO crime figures, which are based on Garda statistics, are due to be published in the next few weeks.
Gardaí publish provisional crime figures in the Commissioner's report every month.
Robbery down 25% across the country
The figures for reported crime in the first quarter of this year show significant reductions in most categories.
There were decreases in all categories of property crime with residential burglaries down 17% - to 15 a day across the country - when compared to the same period last year, and aggravated burglary with violence down 29%.
Robbery was down 25% across the country, while robbery from the person was down 27%.
Theft offences were also down; from people by 30%, from cars or vans by 32% and from shops by 6%.
There were more than 300 fewer incidents of theft from people in Dublin.
Bicycle theft was also down 14%, with a reduction of 19% in Dublin while assaults causing harm were down 8%.
8,300 people arrested for shoplifting
There were increases in some offences. Public order was up 2%, fraud up 61% due to the high number of Section 19 referrals, and shoplifting in Dublin also up 2%.
However, gardaí say under Operation Táirge, over 8,300 people were arrested for shoplifting in the twelve months up to last month, an increase of 8%.
Over 20,200 charges were preferred, an increase of over 30%.Organised crime offences increased, with shootings up 8%, drug dealing up 16% and murder and human trafficking also up, but based on low numbers of 10 incidents each.
The Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau seized almost €22 million worth of drugs in the first three months of this year.
Overall sex offences and domestic violence offences remained static, with gardaí attending over 15,300 domestic abuse incidents in the first three months of this year.
And in a weekend when three people died on the roads in 24 hours, gardaí say fatal and serious road traffic collisions decreased in the first three months by 40%.
However, they also say there are 130 road traffic collisions every day, 23 drivers are arrested every day for drink or drug driving and over 70,000 Fixed Charge Notices (FCN's) have been issued.
More than 31,000 of those FCN's are for speeding, over six thousand are for mobile phone use and 4,400 were issued to provisional or learner drivers.
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