There’s a huge gulf between levels of fear of Dublin city centre, and levels of crime, new survey shows

On a wet Thursday morning, two gardaí search a man outside the General Post Office on O’Connell Street

A few minutes later the same pair search a man on North Prince’s Street, on the south side of the GPO Arcade.

On the other side of a window looking out on that street, the warm and cosy Ultimate Hair & Beauty Salon is bustling with life.

Eight women sit in their comfy salon chairs, sipping teas and coffees, chatting to the staff and each other.

Wolf cuts and grey blending are really popular with clients at the moment, says owner Tanya Murray.

Grey blending means leaving some grey hairs visible, mixed in with some colour.

Since the pandemic, when people couldn’t get their hair done, they became more comfortable showing their greys, Murray says.

It’s also bad for business, she says, laughing, as it means less upkeep.

That hasn’t been the only noticeable change since the pandemic that’s been bad for business, she says.

“Town has completely changed these last few years,” says Margaret Osborne, a regular to Ultimate Hair & Beauty for more than three decades.

Osborne lives in North Wall, where she feels far safer walking around than the city centre, she says.

She walks through Talbot Street and O’Connell Street most days, and thinks they have gotten particularly bad, she says.

Big groups of people drinking in the street, open drug use, aggressive begging and people fighting each other are common sights, and can really intimidate passersby, she says.

But, is town as dangerous as many people have seemingly come to believe?

The new City Centre Crime Victim Survey, commissioned by Dublin Inquirer, and carried out by Amarách Research in September, throws into relief how vastly more people are scared of crime in town, and avoid it because of that, than become victims of it.

Perception of danger in the city centre

The survey sample of 600 people over the age of 18 includes residents living in the city centre – as defined for the purpose of the survey in the map below – and those living in Dublin outside the centre, and in wider Leinster, who visit it.

The survey questions were written by Dublin Inquirer in collaboration with a group of academics at Maynooth University, and Amarách. The survey provides a margin of error of 3.9 percent, according to Amarách.

Of the 505 respondents who said they live outside of the city centre and visit it, 42 percent said they felt (“very” or “mostly”) safe walking alone in the city during the day. This drops to just 20 percent after dark.

There was a significant gender divide among respondents.

During the day, 53 percent of men said they felt safe walking alone in the city centre, but only 33 percent of women did. After dark, 20 percent of men said they felt safe, but only 12 percent of women did.

A strong majority of respondents, 70 percent, said they believed crime had increased in Dublin city centre in the past year.

And 63 percent of survey respondents said they had decided not to visit the city centre because they feel it is too unsafe, rising to 72 percent for women and 77 percent for 18- to 24-year-olds.

Michelle Puckhaber, CEO of the Crime Victims Helpline, said that one of the things that stood out to her about the survey results were the perceptions of safety among younger groups.

Her team would hear from many older people, she says. “There’s a stereotype that older people are more afraid of crime, but less likely to become a victim of crime.”

Younger people are more likely to become a victim, but not have the fear, she says. But in this, respondents in the younger age group are also afraid, she says.

Crime in the city centre

In contrast to the perception, much smaller percentages of the survey respondents had actually been a victim of a crime in the city centre in the previous 12 months.

How much, though

The belief that crime in a city is spiralling out of control, despite evidence to the contrary, is not unique to Dublin or to this moment in history, says Christopher Schreck, associate professor in criminology at Maynooth University.

In 1960s America, during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, there was a growing level of public concern about crime but little information to inform policymaking, Schreck said by phone last Wednesday

The Katzenbach Commission, spearheaded by then-US Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, was established to discover as much as possible about crime and how criminal justice was administered in the United States.

The commission’s final report in 1967 collected the first national level data on the actual risk of victimisation and the fear of crime, and found that there was a mismatch between the two, Schreck says.

Curiously, he says, there were many people who had very low risk of victimisation but who were afraid of it and isolating themselves.

Then there were people who had been victims, but who were less afraid than expected, says Schreck.

It doesn't mean they weren't afraid at all, he says, but it showed that victimisation does not necessarily translate into more fear.

Of course, sometimes fear is reasonable, says Schreck. “So, it’s not a good idea for a government or other authorities to tell people that their fear is unreasonable.”

A certain level of fear can be a good thing, as it prompts us to be vigilant and safe, he says. “My concern as a scholar is when fear of victimisation is either too little or too much in the face of threat.”

The rare ould times

As famed ballad writer Pete St John put it in the 1970s: “My mind’s too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes, I’m a part of what was Dublin in the rare ould times.”

Today, this notion of an old, romantic Dublin of the past fading for the worse carries on outside the realm of song.

Working in a beauty salon in town used to mean something, says Caroline Lynch, who is 33 years working as a hairdresser with Ultimate Hair & Beauty, and 45 years working in the city centre.

While there had been a gradual decline for a long time, it has escalated drastically in the last five years, she said in the salon last Thursday morning.

“I used to be really proud to work in the city centre. It stood for something. It meant you were doing well. That’s gone now,” she says.

Ultimate Hair & Beauty offers customers a warm, friendly and welcoming environment, but outside its doors, many regular clients feel less and less confident, she says.

Some older ladies, now in their 80s, have been with Lynch for 40 years, she says.

They still come to her now out of loyalty and familiarity, she says.

But while some used to spend the afternoon pottering about town after their blow dry or cut, meeting friends for coffee, browsing the shops, Lynch says they now head straight for the bus.

In the US, the company Gallup conducts an annual poll about crime in America.

The data, says Schreck, of Maynooth University, shows that the overwhelming majority of people are not victims of crime in any given year.

People’s knowledge about crime comes instead from what they notice and remember in their environment and what they hear from others, like in the media, he says.

The stories they hear about tend to be the most shocking of crimes, because those sensational stories attract so much attention.

“But it’s also why 28 percent of Americans worry at least occasionally about being the victim of a murder, even though the actual rate of homicide victimisation is less than 7 per 100,000 people,” he says.

We remember the shocking things very easily, he says, and so, think they’re far more common than they really are.

“It’s also why, pretty consistently, at least 70 percent of Americans year after year think crime is getting worse than in the previous year … even though crime has been falling steadily since the early 1990s,” Schreck says.

Cute heuristic

Schreck points to the phenomenon known as the “availability heuristic”.

First described by Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1973, it’s a mental shortcut where people overestimate the importance or likelihood of events that are more easily recalled from memory.

“So, if you were to ask a person to remember some crime that had happened, they're going to have an easier time remembering something they saw in the media, which tends to be an exceptionally serious crime or a violent crime, than they are the more common or more likely crimes, because probably they haven't experienced any themselves,” Schreck says.

That is something that is likely driving, at least in some way, the impression that Dublin is more dangerous than it is, he says.

Looking at the survey data, he says that people who read the Irish Times feel safer than those who read other news – the one exception was in their own neighbourhoods at night, where there was no significant correlation, he says.

Those who follow other outlets, or get their information from posts or videos on social media from sources other than news organisations, feel significantly less safe day or night, at least in their own neighbourhoods, he says.

The shift in how crime was reported in the Irish media, and the impact it had on public perceptions, was noted back in 2007 by Mark O’Brien, who’s now a professor of journalism history at Dublin City University (DCU).

In his book chapter “Selling Fear: The Changing Face of Crime Reporting in Ireland”, in the book Mapping Irish Media, O’Brien argued that Ireland’s image as a peaceful, low-crime society in the past was misleading, shaped by victims’ underreporting, mass emigration, and more restrained media coverage of crime.

Modern perceptions of rising danger at that time stemmed less from actual increases in crime than from a more explicit and sensationalised style of crime reporting that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, he said.

Still, as Lynsey Black noted in her chapter, “Media, public attitudes, and crime”, in the 2016 Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology – “there is no simple linear relationship between crime, media representation and fear of crime”.

The brutal gangland murder of journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996 caused an outpour of public shock at the time, said Black, now an associate professor in the School of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University.

But, despite a much steeper rise in gangland murders in the 2000s, the public concern of crime that immediately followed Guerin’s death did not reemerge in the same way, she wrote.

Inevitably when people are scared, politicians feel like they must respond.

In February 2024, Fianna Fáil TD Jim O'Callaghan, then party spokesperson for justice, now the Minister for Justice, said in a statement that “there is a law and order problem in our cities and rural towns. This can only be adequately confronted by gardaí on the ground.”

But this impulse to look tough on crime can lead to the introduction of measures that are not evidence-based, says Ian Marder, associate professor in criminology at Maynooth University.

“If people are afraid, we should do more effective prevention. But the more that crime is politicised, the less likely the government response is to be based on evidence around what would reduce risk,” Marder says.

In response to queries about the survey findings, a Department of Justice spokesperson said on 1 November that, since taking office, O’Callaghan has “prioritised Garda recruitment and an increase in high visibility policing in Dublin city and regionally. Higher Garda visibility in cities and towns leads to crime prevention.”

“Dublin is a safe city,” the spokesperson said. “It is important however that those using our capital are safe and feel safe while visiting, working or living in the city.”

What to do?

Whatever the new City Centre Crime Victim Survey says about levels of crime in town, there’s loads going on there that makes people feel unsafe, says Caroline Lynch, hairdresser in Ultimate Hair & Beauty.

People begging aggressively, people taking drugs openly and large groups drinking on the street at all times of the day can be very intimidating, especially to older people, she says.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said last week by email that “crime, even if a once-off incident or experience, can have a negative impact on peoples’ general perception of safety”.

So, in March 2025, An Garda Síochána introduced a high-visibility policing plan for Dublin city centre, they said.

This means increased foot patrols focused on public order, antisocial behaviour, drug dealing, and a “pro arrest policy for recidivist offenders, and strong bail objections where appropriate”, they said

The locations, the spokesperson said, were chosen based on feedback from the community and businesses in the city as well as An Garda Síochána’s crime data.

In its first six months, the spokesperson said that the plan produced higher detections for public order offences (+18 percent), drunkenness offences (+67 percent), and drug offences – drugs for sale or supply (+3 percent), and drugs for simple possession (+30 percent)

Alongside reductions in theft from the person (-28 percent), robbery (-9 percent), and assaults causing harm (-17 percent), with more than 3,700 arrests and 8,000 charges issued, they said.

To sustain these gains, Garda numbers in Dublin rose by 217 in 2025, and Budget 2026 allocates a record €2.59 billion to the force, they said.

The Garda presence in town has definitely improved, says Ultimate Hair & Beauty owner Tanya Murray, but she’s not sure how big a difference it’s making.

“They’re trying their best, but they’re limited to what they can do. They move people on, but they just come back a few minutes later,” she says.

Margaret Osborne, from North Wall and a daily visitor to town, says she has passed by people fighting each other many times.

They’re often homeless, she says. “They fight each other, not us.”

Recently she passed two young girls fighting each other, and says she was shocked by how many people were simply standing back and recording it on their phones.

What many people she sees around town need are proper mental-health and addiction supports, she says.

Indeed, says Ian Marder, the criminologist. “The best crime prevention policy is effective and well-resourced social policy.”

Community safety is not solely the responsibility of An Garda Síochána, said the Department of Justice spokesperson.

“A broad approach, which brings together a range of relevant stakeholders to identify and respond to issues which affect the perception of safety, is required,” they said.

“To achieve this, Local Community Safety Partnerships are currently being rolled out throughout Ireland.”

Through years of pilots, and plans, and promises, and despite critiques, the roll-out of the LCSPs is getting slowly closer to a reality.

Note: If you’d like to explore the City Centre Crime Victim Survey data, you can find an array of tables in this spreadsheet. We also have an SPSS file, get in touch if you’d like that: sam@dublininquirer.com.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.