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A FOX NEWS segment that described Dublin as “one of the most dangerous cities in Europe” repeats bad stats and debunked claims to argue that immigrants are responsible for a surge in crime.
Ireland is consistently rated as one of the safest countries in the world.
In a segment decrying immigration and celebrating recent reports that America now has negative net migration – “that means more people leaving America than are moving here,” explains the host Will Cain – Ireland is cited as an example of immigration’s perils.
“Ireland last year [was] seeing its biggest population surge since 2008, largely due to positive net migration. The country has also seen, by the way, a rise in crime,” Cain says.
Onscreen, three statistics are given, all attributed to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The first stat says that 2024 saw the largest year-on-year population gain since 2008, with an increase of 98,700.
The other stats say robberies in Ireland are up 18% and violent crime is up 10% in Q1 2024 (the first three months of 2024). It does not specify what time period the increase is being compared to.
Cain continues: “It’s even more pronounced in the city of Dublin, where murder and assault attempts are surging. This from a city that was one of the safest cities in the world.”
Here, a graphic appears onscreen saying that, according to “Garda, Dublin Metropolitan Region” there was a 114% increase in “murder/assault attempts” in Dublin in 2024. Again, it does not specify what this figure is being compared to.
The host goes on to say that Dublin “now ranks among the top ten most dangerous cities in Europe.” Two headlines flash onscreen, one saying that Dublin is one of the World’s safest cities, while a more recent on says Dublin now ranks in the top ten most dangerous cities in Europe.
The host then turns to a guest described as “British-born author”, who laments that Ireland has “lost control of its borders”.
A clip of this segment posted to YouTube on the night of Monday, 4 August, has been viewed more than 33,000 times as of the time of writing.
It has also been met with some very justified scepticism, including one in-depth social media post by a user called Danny Boy that calls the piece a “brazen manipulation of statistics.”
So, how do the claims in the Fox News piece add up?
Fox starts off by claiming that 2024 saw the largest year-on-year population gain since 2008, with an increase of 98,700. This is true.
A release by the CSO last August included the finding, though it should be noted that it actually refers to the 12 months up to April that year .
The actual net migration was lower, at 79,300, compared with 77,600 in the previous year. But in any case, the general thrust of what Fox is suggesting here is correct.
The same cannot be said for the crime statistics.
The other statistics Fox sourced to the CSO are the claims that, in Q1 2024, robberies in Ireland are up 18% and violent crime is up 10%.
However, there is an immediate problem. “The CSO do not publish incidents by the category of ‘violent crime’ or ‘robberies’ alone,” a spokesperson for the CSO wrote to The Journal. “The coverage you refer to does not reference the correct CSO crime categories or comparative timelines accurately.”
In other words, the CSO groups different crimes together under wider labels. But Fox News is not using these labels, making it hard to figure out what stats they are referring to.
One might interpret “violent crime” as referring to the category “attempts/threats to murder, assaults, harassments and related offences”. However, compared to the previous quarter, CSO figures show a decrease of about 5%. Compared to the first quarter of 2023, it shows an increase of about 1%, not 10% as Fox said.
So, what is Fox News talking about? Tellingly, the “10%” and “18%” figures also appear in a report released by the CSO in June 2024, however they refer to something else.
“Recorded incidents of Robbery, Extortion & Hijacking offences were up by 18% or 390 to 2,572 in the year to Quarter 1 (Q1) 2024 compared with the same period in 2023,” The CSO report reads.
This gives us the timeframe; when Fox News is referring to crime in 2024, they actually mean the period from Q2 of 2023 to the end of Q1 of 2024 (April to March, essentially).
While confusingly presented, this is a legitimate way of looking at stats, given Fox’s figures for the population increase were also based on the same time period.
However, Fox’s labels are still very misleading. Would most people know that extortion was counted under “robberies”? It seems that there is a closer resemblance to the CSO’s category of “Theft and related offences”, though looking at this the increase drops more than half, to 8%, when comparing the same periods.
On the other hand, the 10% figure comes from somewhere unexpected. “Crime incidents involving Weapons & Explosives offences were up by 10%,” the CSO release says.
This category is obviously not the same thing as “violent crime”.
The data on Fox was presented inaccurately. However, aren’t we just focussing on details? Isn’t the important issue whether crime is increasing at the same time that we are seeing a surge in migration? And is that what these figures indicate?
Let’s look at the first crime figure cited (badly) by Fox. An 18% increase in recorded incidents of Robbery, Extortion & Hijacking offences in the year to Quarter 1 (Q1) 2024 compared with the same period in 2023.
While this is an increase over the year before, it is also essentially in line with the same figures for most years prior to the pandemic. The figures were even higher thatn 2024 for every year between Q1 2010 and Q1 2015.
You don’t need to even go so far back for the second category of crimes cited: “Weapons & Explosives offences” (misleadingly called “violent crime” by Fox).
By Q1 2021, there were more of these crimes than the same period ending 2024.
In other words, Fox News is suggesting some kind of crime wave happened due to a surge of immigration in 2024. But the same crimes they (inaccurately) cite to make their point were worse in the past.
However, what about the claim that there has been a staggering 114% increase in “murder/assault attempts” in Dublin in 2024?
Again, confusingly, there is no such category as “murder/assault attempts”, nor is a time frame given by Fox.
If we look at “homicide offences” for the region, there were 19 in 2024, 20 the year before, and 25 the year before that.
In other words: homicide offences are decreasing.
Another possible category they could be referring to is: “Attempts/threats to murder, assaults, harassments and related offences”?
These rose from 7,838 in 2023 to 8,581 in 2024, an increase of 9%, not 114%
There does not seem to be a reasonable way to come up with the large increase claimed by Fox. (The online critique by Danny Boy suggests Fox are citing a right-wing website that used 2003 figures as a comparison).
It might also be noted that it is odd for a news show in America to express horror at the crime statistics in Ireland when the homicide rate in America is multiple times that of Ireland.
Finally, what about the claim on Fox News that Dublin “now ranks among the top ten most dangerous cities in Europe.”
The Journal previously debunked this claim in March after it was widely shared on social media, including by Conor McGregor.
The headline about Dublin being one of the most dangerous cities in Europe was ultimately based on a website that ranks crime “derived from surveys conducted by visitors to our website,” rather than from facts.
“There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained on the website is correct or precise,” that site disclaims.
However, as with other figures cited by Fox, a lack of a factual basis did not stop the claim from being aired.
While comparing crime rates across countries is difficult, Ireland is consistently ranked as one of the safest countries in Europe and, by extension, the world.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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