Ireland in bottom half of European murder rate table

Ireland's murder rate in 2022 was the highest recorded in Ireland in recent years, rising from 0.46 per 100,000 people in 2021 to 0.88 in 2022.

Ireland lies in the bottom half of the table for murder rates in Europe, UN figures show.

Broken down by gender, Ireland has the third lowest murder rate where the victim is a woman.

Based on data from 2022, including both male and female victims, Ireland is below the average rate per head of population across 29 European countries.

The rate in 2022 was the highest recorded in Ireland in recent years, at 0.88 per 100,000 people, compared to 0.46 in 2021.

In 2021, only one European country — Italy — had a lower rate than Ireland, and two had effectively the same rate.

Because there were more murders in 2022, Ireland rose up the table to just below the half way mark — with its rate of 0.88 per 100,000 less than the average of 0.96.

The countries included 26 of the 27 EU countries (no data for Cyprus) along with Britain, Norway, and Switzerland.

The figures are contained in the Global Study on Homicide 2023, compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The homicide study uses figures for murders and the figures it cites for Ireland (23 murders in 2021 and 44 in 2022) reflect the statistics for murder produced by the CSO.

The relevant data for Europe shows:

• Highest rates are in Latvia (3.62 per 100,000) and Lithuania (2.44), followed by Estonia (1.96), Romania (1.26), and Finland (1.21);
• There is a large group just above the one per 100,000 mark — Britain/England and Wales (1.17), France (1.14), Greece (1.13), Bulgaria (1.12), Sweden (1.10), and Belgium (1.08);
• Below that is a group under the one per 100,000 mark — Denmark (0.99), Hungary (0.94), Ireland (0.88), Austria (0.88), Czech Republic (0.83), Germany (0.83), and the Netherlands (0.81);
• The bottom of the table is led by Croatia (0.77), followed by Slovakia (0.73), Poland (0.68), Spain (0.68), Slovenia (0.61), Norway (0.55), Italy (0.55), Switzerland (0.49), and Malta (0.38).

Over the last eight years, Latvia and Lithuania have consistently topped the table.

A large number of countries fluctuate within a small range over the period.

This includes Ireland — where the rate rose from 0.66 in 2015 to 0.82 in 2017, before dropping over the subsequent years to a low of 0.46 in 2021, before rising again to 0.86 in 2022.

Some countries have seen a significant reduction since 2015, including Bulgaria, Hungary, and Estonia.

In terms of gender, Ireland had the third lowest rate (0.39) across the 29 countries for female victims of murder in 2022. Only Belgium (0.19) and Malta (0) had a lower rate.

The Nordic countries all had a higher rate than Ireland: Sweden (0.44), Norway (0.52), Denmark (0.78), and Finland (0.82).

There were 10 murders of women in Ireland in 2022 — compared to seven in 2021 and six in 2020. There were 15 such murders in 2017.

While there are no official murder figures yet for all of 2023, an annual analysis compiled by the Star indicates there were 31 homicides — murders and manslaughters — in Ireland last year, a sharp drop on 2022.

There were only two gun killings in 2023. It said charges of murder have been brought in 21 cases, with assault charges in four separate cases.