CSO, 03 March 2025, 11am
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (03 March 2025) resumed the publication of the Recorded Crime series and has issued the Recorded Crime Quarter 3 (Q3) 2024 release. This release was originally due to be published in December 2024.
The PULSE system is the source of recorded crime data provided to the CSO by An Garda Síochána (AGS) to produce official crime statistics, and only crime incidents recorded on PULSE are included in the CSO’s recorded crime series. As part of our established engagement process around data quality and assurance, AGS notified the CSO in Q4 2024 of 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.
The backlog arose from an increase in the reporting of suspected fraud related incidents by financial institutions from August 2023 onwards following a move to centralise such reports through the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau. This issue is described in more detail by An Garda Síochána in Appendix I of the AGS data quality report on PULSE data published on 18 December 2024.
AGS has stated that all fraud related incidents reported directly to the Gardaí by members of the public are recorded on PULSE. The recording of crime incidents under all other offence categories is not considered to be affected by this issue.
Since the publication of the latest release in the series (Q3 2024) was postponed, the CSO has engaged with AGS to assess the impact of this backlog on the recorded crime series. Arising from this analysis, the Fraud, Deception & Related offences statistics published by the CSO from Q3 2023 onwards is considered to be incomplete as the series excluded significant numbers of fraud incidents not recorded on PULSE but reported to the AGS by financial institutions during the period.
Therefore, users of the series should be aware of the following considerations related to the series:
1. Published Recorded Crime Statistics pre-August 2023
The series prior to Q3 2023 contains both crime incidents reported directly to AGS by members of the public and financial institutions. There is no information currently available to allow the CSO to distinguish crime incidents reported directly by members of the public from those reported by financial institutions for the time series prior to Q3 2023. As a result, the Fraud, Deception & Related offences crime series pre and post Q3 2023 are no longer comparable.
2. Published Recorded Crime Statistics post-August 2023
AGS has supplied the CSO with details of specific fraud crime incidents reported from financial institutions for the period August 2023 to December 2024 and these have now been excluded from the series. This revised series will allow users to observe trends in directly reported (only) fraud crime incidents from Q3 2023 onwards. It should be noted that these figures are below the level of overall reported fraud and are considered incomplete.
3. Recorded Crime Statistics from the resumption of the series in March 2025 with the publication of the Q3 2024 release
The publication of the Recorded Crime Q3 2024 release contains a revised Fraud, Deception and Related Offences series from Q3 2023 onwards based only on fraud crime incidents reported directly to AGS by members of the public.
AGS has described the introduction of a new platform for reporting and processing Section 19 referrals which is expected to improve the efficiency of processing and recording of Section 19 referrals on PULSE, and in time, lead to a significant increase in the overall volume of recorded fraud crime incidents. Please see AGS Information Note published 29 January 2025.
The new platform will also allow AGS to distinguish between fraud incidents reported centrally by financial institutions and those directly reported to the Gardaí by members of the public. This additional data will support greater insight into the origin and nature of fraud incidents for operational and statistical use.
The CSO awaits the full implementation and integration by the AGS of the new processing platform for Section 19 referrals. AGS will advise the CSO when it is satisfied that the volume of fraud incidents on PULSE reflects a substantial and stable percentage of all incidents reported to them both directly by members of the public and by financial institutions. Following a satisfactory assessment of the quality of this data, the CSO will then be in a position to consider expanding the range of published fraud crime statistics to include those reported by financial institutions under Section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2011.
The CSO will continue to engage with AGS around the quality of crime statistics and work with AGS to improve the coverage and presentation of fraud statistics.
James Dalton (+353) 21 453 5623
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