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Following the publication of the fifth Review of the Quality of Crime Statistics in October 2023, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has lifted the 'Under Reservation' categorisation around Recorded Crime Statistics. This is possible because An Garda Síochána have introduced a range of quality measures over the last number of years which have resulted in sustained improvement in the quality of the underlying crime data. These changes give a level of assurance to users that they can rely on Recorded Crime Statistics.
For further information see our Lifting of Under Reservation categorisation for Recorded Crime Statistics FAQ page.
The number of recorded male victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences rose by 54% to 869 victims between 2023 and 2024. This increase related mainly to a near doubling of such crime incidents that were reported by males more than a year after the occurrence.
In seven out of ten (70%) recorded crime incidents of Sexual offences in 2023 that had been detected by 2025, the suspected offender was known to the victim.
The suspected offender was known to the victim in two-thirds (65%) of crime incidents of Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025.
In 2024, three in every ten (30%) victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences reported the incident more than 10 years after it occurred. This was up from 22% in 2023 and 21% in 2022.
Half (50%) of recorded victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences in 2024 were under 18 years of age at the time of occurrence.
Seven out of every ten (69%) crime incidents of Harassment & Related offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025 involved a female victim. In most cases, the suspected offender was a male.
The CSO published its fifth CSO Review of the Quality of Recorded Crime Statistics in October 2023. As part of this review the CSO has lifted the ‘Under Reservation’ designation from all Recorded Crime data disseminated after Quarter 1 (Q1) 2023.
Please see Lifting of Under Reservation Categorisation for Recorded Crime Statistics FAQ for further details.
Data presented in this release is sourced from PULSE, the administrative crime database of An Garda Síochána, and the data for this publication was extracted at the beginning of March 2025. Sexual offences in this publication include Rape & Sexual Assault only.
Statistics relating to victims of recorded crime incidents were first published by CSO in 2019, for the reference period 2016 to 2018. This publication includes statistics for reference year 2024. The full series, from 2016, is available on PxStat.
Statistics relating to suspected offenders of detected crime incidents were published by CSO for the first time in 2020, following the introduction of new data governance controls by An Garda Síochána targeted at improving data quality in the recording of detections in 2018.
Statistical data in respect of suspected offenders is presented for crimes reported between 2021 and 2023 in this publication. Data in respect of suspected offenders is published with a one-year time lag to allow a sufficient volume of investigations to proceed to conclusion. Consequently, data for reference year 2024 will be published in the next reporting period (2025).
Data on the nature of the relationship between victims and suspected offenders of selected offence groups became available from Quarter 3 (Q3) 2021. This data was first published in February 2023 and was based on the relationship with the reported suspect as reported by the victim at the time of the incident. The data presented in chapter 5 of this publication is based on detected crime data for 2023.
Differences between the numbers of suspected offenders in this publication and the Recorded Crime Detection 2023 publication of 27 November 2024 reflect the detection of additional incidents in the interim.
Statistics published in this release are in respect of crime incidents known to and recorded by An Garda Síochána, and do not capture crime incidents which have not been reported by victims.
It should be noted that the crime figures for 2020 and 2021 for some crime categories are likely to have been influenced by the public health restrictions that were imposed as a result of COVID-19.
As the data presented here is from administrative sources, it is not comparable to the results of the survey-based data from the CSO Sexual Violence Survey.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today 18 June 2025 published Recorded Crime Victims 2024 and Suspected Offenders 2023, based on recorded crime data collected by An Garda Síochána on their PULSE system.
Commenting on the release, Jim Dalton, Statistician in the Crime & Criminal Justice Section, said: “Recorded Crime Victim statistics for 2024 and Suspected Offender statistics for 2023 published today show that the number of recorded male victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences increased by more than a half (54%) to 869 victims between 2023 and 2024. This rise related mainly to a near doubling, in the same period, of male victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences who reported the offence more than a year after occurrence.
A crime may be marked as detected when An Garda Síochána have identified at least one person responsible for committing the offence and that person has been issued a charge or summons, a formal or informal caution, or a fixed payment notice. This person is termed as a suspected offender. Data on suspected offenders is published with a one year time lag to allow time for criminal investigations to progress.
The results also show that the suspected offender was known to the victim in seven out of ten (70%) recorded crime incidents of Sexual offences in 2023 that had been detected by 2025. In two-thirds (65%) of detected crime incidents of Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences, the suspected offender was known to the victim.
Reporting of Crime Incidents of Sexual Offences and Other Crime Incidents
Historic crime incidents of Sexual offences refer to those which were reported more than one year after the occurrence while recent crime incidents refer to those reported within one year of the occurrence.
The number of recorded male victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences rose by 303 or 54% to 869 victims between 2023 and 2024. This was due to a near doubling of male victims reporting historic crime incidents of this type of offence, which rose from 333 victims to 645 victims for the same period.
The number of female victims of this type of offence increased marginally from 2,387 in 2023 to 2,419 victims in 2024. Females remained the main victims of recorded crime incidents of Sexual offences, accounting for three out of every four victims (74%) in 2024, compared with 26% for males.
There were 77 recorded victims of crime incidents of Homicide & Related offences in 2024, down 11 from the 88 victims recorded in 2023. Of the total victims, 41 were by Murder or Manslaughter while the remaining 36 were by Dangerous Driving Leading to Death. Three out of four (74%) victims of all crime incidents of Homicide offences in 2024 were male while 26% were females.
There were 24,142 recorded victims of crime incidents of Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences in 2024 and this was the highest over the four-year period 2021-2024. Within this category, 62% of assault victims were male compared with 38% for females. Nearly seven in ten (69%) victims of crime incidents of Harassment & Related offences were female compared with 31% for males. There was a more even distribution between males (52%) and females (48%) for crime incidents of Attempts/Threat to Murder offences.
Relationship Between Victims and Suspected Offenders
The suspected offender was known to the victim in seven out of every ten (70%) recorded crime incidents of Sexual offences in 2023 that had been detected by 2025. For detected crime incidents of Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences, two-thirds (65%) involved a suspected offender who was known to the victim.
Looking at the nature of the relationship in more detail, we found that in 16% of detected crime incidents of Sexual offences, the suspected offender was a friend or acquaintance of the victim and was a blood relative in 13% of incidents. Current or former intimate partners or spouses accounted for 8% of all suspected offenders for this type of offence. The share for other suspected offenders known to the victim was 18% and this relationship category would be considered less personal in nature to the above categories. The suspected offender was a stranger to the victim in three out of every ten (30%) such detected crime incidents.
When looking at detected crime incidents of Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences, friends or acquaintances accounted for 13% of suspected offenders. Current or former intimate partners and spouses accounted for 8% and 6% respectively of suspected offenders. The share of blood relatives among suspected offenders was 7% while it was 5% for people in a position of authority or in a care relationship with the victim. The share for other suspected offenders known to the victim was 23%. In more than a third (35%) of such crime incidents, the suspected offender was a stranger to the victim.
Age of Victims in Serious Crimes Against the Person
Serious crimes against the person include Homicide & Related offences, Sexual offences, and Assault & Related offences (Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences).
In 2024, 50% of recorded victims of crime incidents of Sexual offences were aged under 18 years at the time of occurrence. Most other victims were aged between 18 and 44 years.
Just over a quarter (27%) of recorded victims of crime incidents of Murder or Manslaughter in 2024 were at least 60 years of age when the incident occurred. Just over a fifth of victims (22%) were under 30 years of age at the time of the incident.
One in six (17%) of recorded victims of crime incidents of Harassment & Related offences were under 18 years of age when the incident occurred. Most other victims were aged between 18 and 59 years and 6% of victims were aged 60 years or more.
Crime Incident Reporting Gap
The crime incident reporting gap is the time period between when a crime incident occurs and when it is reported to the Gardai.
In 2024, three in every ten (30%) of the 3,288 recorded victims of Sexual offence crime incidents reported the incident more than 10 years after it occurred. This represented a higher share than the previous three years as it had been about 22% in both 2023 and 2022 and 26% in 2021. In absolute terms, there were 971 such victims of Sexual offences in 2024 and this rose from 646 victims in 2023.
By contrast, while the number of victims who reported the crime incident within a year of occurrence remained much the same at 1,925, between 2023 and 2024, the share of total victims declined, falling from 65% in 2023 to 59% in 2024.
The share of victims who reported incidents of Sexual offences in the intervening periods remained much the same between 2023 and 2024 at 12%.
Historic Crime Incidents
The number of recorded male victims of historic crime incidents of Sexual offences almost doubled from 333 to 645 victims between 2023 and 2024.
As a result, in 2024, males accounted for 47% of all recorded victims of historic crime incidents of Sexual offences and this was up from 32% in 2023 and 30% in 2022. Female victims represented 53% of reported victims of these crime incidents in 2024 and this was down from 68% in 2023 and 70% in 2022.
The majority (95%) of recorded male victims of historic crime incidents of Sexual offences were under 18 years of age when the incident occurred. Two thirds (67%) of female victims were under 18 years of age. Please see Table 2.4 of the release for more details.
Age of Suspected Offender in Serious Crime Incidents
A quarter (23%) of suspected offenders of crime incidents of Harassment & Related offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025 were under 18 years when the crime incident took place.
Crime incidents of Harassment & Related offences would include coercion or coercive control, harassment, incitement to hatred, distributing/publishing/recording intimate image(s), distribution of grossly offensive communications to cause harm and recording intimate image(s) to cause interference or alarm.
Six out of every ten (62%) of suspected offenders for crime incidents of Sexual offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025 were aged between 18 and 44 years of age when the incident occurred. About one in every eight (12%) suspected offenders were under 18 years of age at the time of the incident.
Turning to assault crime incidents from 2023 that have been detected, nearly two-thirds (65%) of suspected offenders of this offence type were aged between 18 and 44 years and 16% were under 18 years when the incident took place.
Similar to detected crime incidents of assault, two-thirds (65%) of suspected offenders of crime incidents of detected Homicide & Related offences from 2023 were aged between 18 and 44 years when the incident occurred.
Profile of Suspected Offenders and Victims
When the victim and suspected offender are recorded for a detected crime incident it is possible to link a victim and suspected offender to produce a limited profile (i.e. age and sex) of the victim and suspected offender relationship.
When this was done for crime incidents recorded in 2023 but detected by 2025, we found that seven out of ten (69%) detected crime incidents of Harassment & Related involved a female victim. The suspected offender was male in nine out of every ten (87%) crime incidents of this type.
For crime incidents of assault in 2023 that were marked detected, there were more male (61%) than female victims (39%). Where the suspected offender was male, 54% of all victims were male and 25% were female. For the remaining cases where the suspected offender was female, 14% of all victims were female and 6% were male.
Most (84%) recorded crime incidents of Sexual offences in 2023 that were marked detected in 2025 involved a male suspected offender and female victim. However, the suspected offender and victim were both male in 15% of such crime incidents.
Two-thirds (65%) of recorded crime incidents of Homicide & Related offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025 involved both a male suspected offender and a male victim."