Advisory Note - Fraud Crime Statistics 2024

CSO, 19 December 2024, 11am

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has postponed the publication of Recorded Crime Statistics for Q3 2024, which was due to be published today (19 December 2024), until early 2025. This is due to a backlog in the recording of potential fraud related crime incidents reported by Financial Institutions under Section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act 2011 on the PULSE system. This issue has recently been notified to the CSO by An Garda Síochána (AGS) as part of our established engagement process around data quality and assurance. The recording of crime incidents under all other offence categories is not considered to be affected by this issue.

As a result, the volume of incidents previously published by the CSO from PULSE data under the category of Fraud, Deception & Related offences, has been understated. Statistics relating to Fraud, Deception & Related offences are therefore considered incomplete and the CSO is advising users to exercise caution when using these statistics. This issue is described in more detail in Appendix I of the AGS data quality report on PULSE data published on 18 December 2024.

The PULSE system is the source of recorded crime data provided to the CSO by AGS to produce official crime statistics, and only incidents recorded on PULSE are included in the CSO’s recorded crime series. The AGS data quality report states that all fraud related incidents reported directly to AGS are recorded on PULSE, along with those incidents reported under Section 19 by Financial Institutions that have been processed so far.

The processing by AGS of suspected fraud and economic crime incidents reported under Section 19, will ultimately lead to a more complete and detailed set of statistics on fraud, deception, and economic crime in Ireland.

The CSO has postponed the publication of this release to allow for further discussions with AGS to assess the scale and likely impact of this issue on the recorded crime statistics for the Fraud, Deception & Related offences category, and to determine any required revisions or updates to previously published statistics. At present, the CSO has no firm estimate of the number of suspected crime incidents involved, or the likely impact on the time series under the category of Fraud, Deception & Related offences.

AGS are working to provide the CSO with further information, and the CSO understands that such information will enable CSO to publish Q3 2023 Recorded Crime, in early 2025, with a revised Fraud, Deception & Related offences time series, based on incidents reported directly to AGS. In the meantime, AGS will continue to process the Section 19 returns from the Financial Institutions.