Dr. Gurchand Singh:

I might take a few of the issues at the same time. I will first turn to the trends in terms of the recorded crime figures. In the public attitudes survey we asked several sets of questions, one of which was if people had been a victim of crime. Since we started this survey, in the first quarter of 2105 up to the most recent results, one of the things we have seen is a reduction in victimisation rates. This is irrespective of whether people have reported it to the Garda or not. We asked a nationally representative random sample of people if they had been a victim of crime. It was not all sets of crime, but it was large volume crimes. We have seen a reduction in victimisation rates. I will give the committee a sense of that. When we looked at rural communities within the first quarter of 2015, about 12% of people said they had been a victim of crime. That figure has been dropping steadily and in the third quarter of 2016 about 5.1% of people said they had been a victim of crime. The people we have asked are a nationally representative selection. I have confidence in the recorded crime figures also showing a downward trend, so I have confidence that the trend is correct. There are issues about the volumes but the trend is correct.

This leads us on to another interesting aspect which is if victimisation figures are going down, then how does that impact on people and their feelings? One of the things we also asked about was people's perceptions of crime in their local area. One of the things we see in rural communities is that people's perception of crime in their local communities is actually dropping. If one looks at the third quarter of 2015, 31% of people in rural communities said that crime was a very serious or serious problem. That figure has dropped to 21% in the second quarter. That can be flipped around by asking how many people say that crime is not a problem, but the perception of crime in the local communities has reduced. It is interesting that if one asks about crime in Ireland, as opposed to in the local community, the numbers flip around, with 83% of people in rural communities saying that crime levels in Ireland are very bad and are a very serious or serious problem in Ireland. We have an interesting split where people will say that crime in their local community is not a significant problem and it is actually reducing, but when one talks about Ireland as a whole people will say that actually crime is a significant problem.

In some of the figures from the report we produced for the 2015 public attitude survey as published - we are running this year's survey with additional questions - one of the things we wanted to do was have a look at the whole issue of the fear of crime. Again, we get a very nuanced picture there. When we talk about the fear of crime it is interesting. If one asks a person what is the likelihood of him or her being victimised in a property crime or a crime against the person, people within rural communities are more likely to say that they are not going to be victimised. Some 48% of people in rural areas said that they do not feel they are going to be a victim of crime, compared to 38% of people in city areas. When we asked people if they have a fear of crime, a lot of fear, medium fear or no fear we had interesting responses. People in rural areas are more likely to say they have no fear of crime. When people were asked about the impact it has on their lives or if the fear of crime cripples their quality of life, again people in rural areas are more likely to say that it does not impact on their lives. Some 62% of people in rural communities said that their fear of crime does not impact on their quality of life, compared to 52% of people in city areas. So, the picture is quite nuanced. When the Chairman made reference to a fear of crime or the concern about crime, the question is around where that concern resides? Does the concern reside in what is happening within the local community or does it reside in what the perception of what is happening in the State as a whole? We need to get a much more nuanced picture of people's perceptions around this issue.

The other matter raised was about travelling criminals and the assistant commissioner can answer a bit more on this. This also produces a bit of a nuanced picture. We did a piece of work on this when we were looking at burglary and one of the really interesting things is that in the majority of the burglaries that are detected, the suspect offender actually resides in the division where they offended. There is a travelling element, undoubtedly, but the majority of the incidents are local. We can see that from the figures. The concern about the travelling element arises where there is the notion of unknown people using the motorways etc., and that can certainly have an impact but burglary is a local phenomenon and we just have to be mindful of that.

The recording of the crimes certainly is an issue at which we are looking at. The matter was raised when the Commissioner brought together her senior management team in Westmanstown earlier this week. We are going to meet the Central Statistics Office to put together a plan of action to try to improve the recording of crime because we all realise that the better the recording of crime the better the picture we have and the more likely we are to be able to support the communities we serve.