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A segment that aired on right-wing American channel Fox News in early August has sparked a controversial debate in Ireland, leading the country’s former Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to post on X, directing his followers to a thread fact-checking the broadcaster’s claims.
In the TV piece, Fox alleged that Dublin has gone from being one of the safest cities in Europe in 2003, to one of the most dangerous in 2024.
To support this claim, Fox showed a screenshot of an article published in 2024 by the Irish newspaper Sunday World titled “Dublin ranks among the top ten most dangerous major cities in Europe, survey claims.”
However, when investigating the claim, EuroVerify found that the article uses data sourced from a survey carried out by online betting platform the OLBG (Online Betting Guide).
“The main reason why this research was conducted was to reveal the best cities in Europe for nightlife, and as part of the study, safety scores for each city were analysed”, a spokesperson for the OLBG told EuroVerify.
The reliability of the survey is questionable given that OLBG sourced its data from Numbeo, a platform which relies on crowd-sourced data and warns there is no “assurance that any statement on the website is correct or precise.”
Meanwhile, the Global Peace Index, which is produced by the Australian-based NGO, the Institute for Economics & Peace, has consistently ranked Ireland as one of the safest countries in the world, placing it in second position in 2025.
Rising crime in Ireland
During the piece, the channel aired two graphs side by side on screen — on the left one showing rising immigration in Ireland, while the one on the right displayed figures for rising crime — in turn implying that there is a causal link between migration and crime.
Contacted by EuroVerify, Ireland’s Department of Justice said that it was not “aware of any credible evidence that would suggest a causal link between immigration and crime in Ireland.”
“Over the past 10 years there has been a large increase in the numbers of non-Irish people employed in Ireland. They bring essential skills and experience that are much needed in the current labour market. There has been no corresponding change in crime levels over this period,” the spokesperson added.
Ireland experienced unprecedented levels of immigration in the year leading up to April 2024, with a population increase of 98,700, which amounts to positive net migration of 79,300, meaning that more people have been arriving in Ireland, than those leaving.
Fox News also stated that robberies had increased by 18% and violent crime by 10%. However, these selected crime and robbery statistics are misleading because the country’s statistics office does not classify crimes under the broad labels of “robbery” and “violent crime.”
More specifically, the 18% figure cited by Fox appears to refer to an increase in “robbery, Extortion & Hijacking” from the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024, while the 10% figures refer to an increase in crime incidents involving “weapons and explosives offences.”
What the segment fails to mention is that other crimes decreased between the first quarter of 2023 and the same period of 2024, with homicide and sexual offences dropping by 8% and 12% respectively.
How disinformation is fuelling hate crimes in Ireland
Over the course of the summer, a spate of brutal attacks predominantly targeting South Asian migrants occurred in Ireland.
“A series of highly publicised, very violent attacks targeting members of Ireland’s Indian community have spread fear. A lot of the attacks were initiated by misinformation and disinformation, for instance through lies spread about crime”, Teresa Buczkowsa, the CEO of Immigrant Council of Ireland told Euronews.
On 19 July, an Indian man was attacked by a group of men in southwest Dublin, who beat him and accused the man of inappropriate behaviour with children.
While Irish authorities stated that the allegations against him were unfounded, footage of the aftermath of the attack spread online according to Irish broadcast RTE, leading the footage to gain traction as anti-immigration accounts reshared it.
This led the country’s Indian embassy to issue a safety warning to its citizens following what it qualified as “an increase in the instances of physical attacks reported against Indian citizens in Ireland recently.”
“Everything changed after the Dublin riot in 2023, when we saw a huge level of violence erupting in Dublin city centre against migrants and that really kind of was the starting point for the physical violence we are seeing today”, said Buczkowsa.
“The shifting narrative we are hearing in politics and false allegations that migrants are raising crime rates are leaking into everyday conversations and opinions, which is a worrying trend”, added Buczkowsa.
