Increase in burglaries driven by recession

Thefts of personal belongings and home burglaries have jumped as the effects of the recession deepen, new statistics show.

While murders, shootings and kidnappings are down, other gangland crimes have risen, with an almost doubling in bomb attacks and cash-in-transit robberies and hikes in threats of murder and importation and cultivation of drugs.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter expressed concern at the rise in property crime, as well as a jump in fraud offences, and said the garda commissioner was targeting serial burglars.