Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 November 2023
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 2 - Department of the Taoiseach (Supplementary)
Vote 5 - Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (Supplementary)
Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source
There has been a 28% increase in the number of prosecution files received by the directing division for decision between 2017 to 2022, with 17,359 files received in 2022. Over the same period, there has been a 28% increase in investigation files received for public order offences. There has been a 65% increase in misuse of drugs files received and a 54% increase in files related to criminal damage, and a 58% increase in non-fatal offences and assault files.
On an international front, there has been a 77% increase in requests for mutual legal assistance from other countries. In addition, there has been an exponential growth in the level of data and complexity routinely involved in a range of different offence types, including sexual offences, theft and fraud offences and organised crime which requires teams of legal staff for each case.