Cork Crime: Theft and public order offences wreaking havoc in city's crime hotspots
Inside the four walls of Anglesea Street Garda Station in Cork City, dozens of crimes are recorded every week — sexual assaults, drug offences, criminal damage, and burglaries.
There, too, at the very top of the list, are thefts and public order offences, accounting for almost two thirds of the 3,328 crimes reported to gardaí in the city centre station last year.
The data from the Central Statistics Office shows that the station is the busiest of the 14 stations in the Cork City division.
Following our focus on courts in June, the 'Irish Examiner' is exploring crime data from garda stations in our series in print and online here on Monday and Tuesday, August 4 and 5.
The official population covered by Anglesea Street Garda Station is just 9,049, but the station plays a much broader role in policing the city and suburbs as the divisional headquarters for the entire city and county.
When examined through a national lens, the stats for Cork city centre are notably high, with the total numbers of crimes reported to gardaí in Anglesea Street 800% higher than the national average for garda stations.
Reported Crimes by Garda Station in 2024
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Cork City Division
Anglesa Street
Blackrock
Bridewell
Ballincollig
Blarney
Gurranabraher
Watercourse Road
Bishopstown
Carrigaline
Douglas
Passage West
Togher
Mayfield
Glanmire
Cork North / West Divisions
However, bar the Bridewell and Watercourse Rd stations, the number of crimes reported to gardaí in the other stations in Cork city garda division was lower than the national average.
These other stations include Passage West, which, with 78 reported crimes last year, was 73% lower than the national average.
Among those crimes were five burglaries, six controlled drug offences, and seven public order incidents. No thefts or related offences were recorded.
By stark contrast, Anglesea Street Garda Station received 1,309 reports of thefts and related offences among the 3,328 crimes recorded last year.
There were also 852 public order-related offences, a pattern also seen in the other two stations in the city’s basin.
The Bridewell handled 1,743 crime reports last year, including 696 thefts and related offences, and 361 public order-related offences.
At Watercourse Rd, more than 1,500 reported crimes were logged, including 537 thefts and 219 public order offences.
In Blackrock, in the eastern suburbs of the city, public order incidents ranked lower down the scale, with thefts the most reported crime followed by damage to property and the environment, accounting for 90 of the 599 crimes reported to the local station.
Similarly, Gurranabraher and Blarney garda stations reported damage to property and the environment second to incidences of theft.
Solicitor Shane Collins-Daly, a specialist in criminal law, said it is no surprise that the city centre accounts for such a large proportion of reported crime.
“I think it is certainly very busy in the city centre courts. I think it is busier than it was five or 10 years ago,” he said.
“There is a bit of a rise in the population and the accommodation crisis is leading to people not having secure accommodation.
“They are ending up in homeless shelters in the city centre, which do a fantastic job, but you have people congregating in the city centre where drink and drugs are readily available. Retail shops are on the doorstep so everything is in a bit of a melting pot in the city centre.”
He said there are “certain hotspots” for antisocial behaviour.
“Down by Parnell Place, Lower Oliver Plunkett St, around the GPO, sometimes up on Grand Parade and the bridge across to Sullivan’s Quay. The city centre itself is quite compact and the two homeless shelters are not too far from each other and from the Parnell Place and Lower Oliver Plunkett St area.”
Sharon Lambert, a senior lecturer at UCC’s School of Applied Psychology, said it is not surprising that crimes such as theft and public order are so prevalent in the city centre basin, given social problems affecting the population in the area, including homelessness and addiction.
Ms Lambert, a council member of the Psychological Society of Ireland, added: “The statistics appear to show theft and public order offences as the two main issues recorded. Ireland is experiencing a greater wealth gap, with increasing levels of recorded poverty and poor or no housing.
“We have record levels of homelessness and ever-burgeoning waiting lists for physical and psychological health services.
“It is recommended that 10% of a health budget should be allocated to mental health spending — Ireland has never achieved this.
“The percentage of the health budget allocated to mental health has fallen from 6% to 5.6%, according to Mental Health Reform.
“The pathways in and out of criminal behaviour have been well researched, and the best approach to tackling crime, is a society that provides for the health, housing, and educational needs of its citizens.”
This sentiment was also highlighted in a recent analysis of more than 5,000 court reports published in the and between 2020 and 2024, which showed theft as the top offence.
Homeless people received almost a quarter of the jail sentences handed down in Cork City over the five-year period, according to the study.
Mr Collins-Daly sees this at first hand every day in the courts. “We see in the courts a huge rise in recent years in people presenting with significant social challenges, whether it’s homelessness or addiction or mental health, and quite often a combination of all of them,” he said.
“People often blame covid for everything and I suppose it did become a bit more noticeable since covid but we see a lot of people with a combination of mental health difficulties and addiction difficulties and one can often aggravate or instigate the other.”
He cited a case of a man with mental health difficulties who was arrested on a public order matter who was remanded in custody for several months, during which he accessed the care of the prison’s psychiatry team.
Efforts were made, unsuccessfully, to get him access to therapeutic bail, which would allow him to leave prison to go into a secure mental health hospital service.
Mr Collins-Daly said this was somebody “essentially being held in custody because of a lack of an alternative”.
It is not the first time he has seen such a case.
“It is down to a lack of services for both outpatients and inpatients, from the point of view of mental health and psychiatry.”
Addiction is fuelling crimes in Cork city centre, according to Mr Collins-Daly.
The thefts in the city centre often include a lot of alcohol, as well as “theft of essentials”, and items that can easily sold to feed addiction.
“Sometimes high-value items like perfume. Football jerseys were popular a number of years back. There are other things that seem to be prevalent that are being taken and sold — jewellery, perfume, Yankee candles.”
He said that, in recent times, meat is something being regularly stolen.
“Steaks, in particular. I would think it is to get money to feed addiction, to buy drink or drugs. It is an unusual one.”
He hears anecdotally about the use of crack cocaine in the city centre.
“You do see people presenting with different features of addiction. Years ago with heroin, it would be very obvious if someone was under the influence, but now people are often coming in more agitated and hyper and you would see more irritation in people with more outbursts in court.”
The number of gardaí in Cork city centre stations has fallen dramatically in recent years.
Anglesea Street Garda Station had 244 gardaí in May this year, according to the most recent statistics available from An Garda Síochána — a drop from 326 across all ranks in December 2019.
Staffing at the Bridewell has increased by just two in that period, from 25 in 2019 to 27 in May.
However, a closer inspection of the figures attached to the Bridewell shows that staffing of the station has in fact dropped from 40 in December 2021 to 27 this year.
The allocation of officers at the city’s third-busiest station, at Watercourse Rd, fell from 37 at the end of 2019 to 31 in May.
The overall number of gardaí in Cork city has fallen from 730 in December 2021 to 663 in May, according to garda statistics.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said recently that Cork will secure 20 new probationer gardaí from the next attestation of recruits from the Garda College in Templemore this month.
However, a spokesman for An Garda Síochána would not confirm the allocation, instead telling the : “An Garda Síochána only publishes detailed information on the allocation of Garda trainees on the day of their passing out from the Garda College. The next passing out ceremony is scheduled for end of August.”
Local Cork City retailer Kevin Herlihy said there has been a noticeable increase in garda presence in the city centre in recent months.
“There has been some improvement with the level of gardaí on the street but it is nowhere near where it needs to be” he said.
“While there has been a slight increase with garda footfall, there is still a lot of antisocial behaviour. I am spending a lot on security every week to protect the staff from antisocial behaviour.”
Mr Herlihy said the opening of the former Debenhams/Roches Stores building on St Patrick’s Street will make a big difference to the city centre, with the removal of hoarding set to make it a more open and visually attractive area.
Last year, amid growing concerns that Cork city centre was an unsafe place, the Leave A Light On initiative was launched by the Cork Nighttime Economy, supported by Cork Business Association.
The initiative involved businesses in the area being paid a small grant if they agreed to leave their lights on at night as part of a new campaign to help create safer and cleaner city streets.
The association is currently working in tandem with Cork City Council and gardaí to recruit four community wardens for the city.
The pilot programme has received funding from the Department of Justice and Cork City Council.
The business association said the wardens “will serve as a welcoming and visible presence on city streets, engaging with the public and visitors, supporting businesses, and helping to maintain a clean, safe, and inviting environment” for all who visit or live or work in Cork City.
In its recent pre-budget submission, the business group called on the government to increase garda numbers in the city centre.
The submission also calls for a review of the current court system to explore alternatives to having gardaí on duty in court all day — such as the use of affidavits — that could help return more gardaí to frontline duties in Cork city centre.
Clara O’Neill, chairwoman of the Cork 2030 Committee, which overarches the retail and the safe & clean committees in the Cork Business Association, said they “have long campaigned for a stronger Garda presence on our streets — a key element of any safe city”.
When initial data indicated that reported theft figures were surprisingly low in the city centre, Cork Business Association launched a targeted campaign urging retailers to report all theft incidents regardless of value — even as low as €2 — which many businesses had previously deemed not worth logging.
As a result, she said, there has been a significant rise in the number of reported thefts, which is not “necessarily a surge in crime rates”.
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