Burglaries in Ireland: What the Q1 2026 CSO Data Actually Shows

The National Picture

Burglaries in Ireland rose from 2,124 in Q1 2025 to 2,161 in Q1 2026, an increase of 1.7%. An increase of 37 incidents on a base of more than 2,000 burglaries is inside the range you would expect from quarter-to-quarter variation.

However, the national figure conceals a significant shift across the country. Burglaries rose across Munster (31.6%) and Connacht/Ulster (15.3%), while they fell by 4.1% in Dublin and 6.5% across the counties of Leinster excluding Dublin.

Burglaries by Garda Division

Source: CSO recorded crime (CJQ10)

Source: CSO recorded crime (CJQ10)

Clare/Tipperary was the biggest mover with 40 additional burglaries, closely followed by Meath/Westmeath (+38) and Kerry (+34). On the other hand, Wexford/Wicklow was down 46 burglaries and Dublin South saw 45 fewer burglaries in the same quarter.

Interestingly, Donegal and Limerick both remain unchanged, with the exact same number of reported burglaries year-on-year.

While we're looking at the change in burglaries, it's worth noting the volumes here. Dublin West saw 199 burglaries in the quarter, which is more than all four divisions in Connacht/Ulster combined. And while Munster saw the biggest increase as a percentage, Dublin remains the place with the highest number of burglaries at 949 for the quarter.

The Motorway Pattern

One thing worth looking at is where the increases actually landed. Clare/Tipperary (+40), Meath/Westmeath (+38) and Laois/Offaly (+10) all sit on the country's main motorway spines: the M7/M8 running south-west and the M4/N4 running west. Donegal, the division with the least motorway access in the state, recorded no change at all.

That isn't proof of anything on its own, and one quarter of data can't establish a pattern. But it does line up with what Gardaí have said for years about mobile groups travelling from urban centres to rural properties and back in a single night. Good road access cuts both ways, and the divisions that gained the most from motorway investment over the last twenty years are the same ones showing up here.

Without Munster, Burglaries Fell

Here's the part that gets lost in the national figure.

Munster recorded 323 burglaries in Q1 2025 and 425 in Q1 2026. That's an increase of 102 incidents, which on its own is nearly three times the national increase of 37.

Across the other sixteen Garda divisions, burglaries went from 1,801 to 1,736 — a fall of 3.6%.

So the national number isn't telling you that burglaries went up in Ireland. It's telling you that one region went up sharply enough to cancel out everywhere else falling. Munster's share of all burglaries in the country rose from 15.2% to 19.7% in a single year, which is the biggest movement in the dataset by some distance.

Dublin Isn't One Place

We tend to talk about Dublin as though it's a single risk. The data says otherwise.

Source: CSO recorded crime (CJQ10)

Dublin South fell 28.7% while Dublin North Central rose 19.0%. Four of the six Dublin divisions recorded fewer burglaries than they did a year earlier.

Dublin West is the other number to note. At 199 burglaries in the quarter, it's the single highest divisional count in the country, and it's more than all four Connacht/Ulster divisions put together.

So where you live in Dublin matters more than the fact that you live in Dublin. And it's worth saying that Dublin as a whole improved this year.

More Break-Ins, But Fewer Confrontations

The CSO splits burglary into separate offence types, and the split is more interesting than the headline.

Source: CSO recorded crime (CJQ10)

Aggravated burglary is the category where someone was home and was threatened or assaulted. It fell 7% year-on-year, from 57 incidents to 53. Non-aggravated burglary rose 1.9%.

Put another way, aggravated burglary made up 2.5% of all burglary offences this quarter, down from 2.7% last year. Roughly 39 out of every 40 burglaries in Ireland happen with nobody at home.

That's the reassuring half of this data, and it's worth stating, because it's the opposite of the impression most people have.

Munster is the exception again. It's the only region that got worse on both measures: volume up 31.6% and aggravated burglaries up from 8 to 14, with the aggravated share rising from 2.5% to 3.3% while the national share was falling. Cork County and Limerick account for most of that.

One caveat on these figures. Aggravated burglary is only 53 incidents spread across 21 Garda divisions, so individual divisions are working with counts of nought to six. At that scale a percentage change is close to meaningless; Cork County going from 0 to 5 is five incidents, not an infinite increase. We've reported aggravated burglary at national and regional level only for that reason, and the same applies to the Connacht/Ulster figure falling from 7 to 1. It looks dramatic, but it's a movement of six incidents.

The Dublin Number That Isn't Really About Burglaries

There's a third offence type in the burglary group that almost nobody reports on, and it behaves very differently to the other two.

Source: CSO recorded crime (CJQ10)

Possession of an article with intent to burgle covers someone caught carrying burglary tools before anything has happened. Six Dublin divisions recorded 47 of these offences last quarter. The other fifteen divisions in the country recorded twelve between them. All four Connacht/Ulster divisions recorded none at all, in either quarter.

The reason the gap is that wide is that this offence can't be recorded passively. Nobody rings a Garda station to report it. It only appears on the record when a Garda stops and searches somebody, which makes it a measure of enforcement activity rather than criminal activity.

That has two consequences worth understanding.

The first is that Dublin's headline burglary total is slightly inflated by an offence category that exists because Gardaí are out looking for it. Dublin looks worse on the total than it does on actual break-ins.

The second is more positive. Dublin recorded more preventative stops and fewer completed burglaries — aggravated down 14% and non-aggravated down 4.3% — which is what you'd hope proactive policing looks like.

We can't tell from this data alone whether that reflects more enforcement or more people carrying burglary tools around Dublin.

What This Means For Your Home Insurance

Will this push up your premium?

Almost certainly not, and it's worth being straight about that.

Insurers don't price off quarterly crime releases. Home insurance pricing is built on several years of claims experience at a fairly granular geographic level, and a single quarter's movement — particularly one of 37 incidents nationally — doesn't register. What has actually been driving home premiums in Ireland is rebuild cost inflation, not crime.

Where cover actually falls down

In our experience, the problems after a burglary are rarely about whether someone had insurance. They're about the detail of what they had.

• Single article limits. Most contents policies cap what they'll pay for any one item. Jewellery, watches, laptops, cameras and bikes routinely exceed that cap, and it's the single most common source of disappointment after a break-in. Anything valuable usually needs to be specified separately on the policy.
• Unoccupancy. Most policies restrict or exclude cover once a property has been empty for a set period, commonly 30 or 60 consecutive days. That's directly relevant to what we're seeing in this data: Kerry recorded the largest proportional increase in the country and also has one of the highest concentrations of holiday and second homes in the state. If a property is going to sit empty for long stretches, unoccupied home insurance is a separate conversation from standard cover.
• Alarms. If a policy was written on the basis that a property has a working alarm, not setting it can affect a theft claim. Very few people realise this is a condition rather than a discount.
• Under-insurance. Contents sums insured tend to get set once and never revisited. With the inflation of the last few years, a figure chosen in 2019 may now cover a fraction of what's actually in the house — and most policies apply average, meaning a settlement gets scaled down in proportion to the shortfall.
• Two sections, not one. Damage to a door or window frame during a forced entry falls under buildings cover, while the stolen items fall under contents. Depending on the policy, that can mean two separate excesses on the same incident.
• Renting. A landlord's policy covers the building, not the tenant's belongings. Contents cover among Irish renters remains low, and renters are not exempt from any of the figures above.

What insurance doesn't cover

Home insurance covers property. It doesn't cover the aftermath of walking in on somebody, which is why the aggravated burglary figure matters more than its size suggests.

Victims of violent crime in Ireland can apply to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal, which sits entirely outside the insurance system and is worth knowing about. It's not something that comes up often in coverage of burglary statistics, but it's more relevant to those 53 incidents than any policy wording is.

If you want to check what your own cover actually includes, you can compare home insurance across the market in a few minutes.

Methodology

All figures are taken from the Central Statistics Office.

• Source: CSO recorded crime, table CJQ10, using the Full Download option. Station-level detail is available at CJA11.
• Period: Q1 2025 compared with Q1 2026, year-on-year.
• Premises: CSO burglary figures cover all premises and do not separate homes from commercial properties. Figures in this piece should be read as burglaries of homes and premises combined, not homes alone.
• Offence types: The burglary group covers aggravated burglary (0711), burglary not aggravated (0712) and possession of an article with intent to burgle or steal (0713). Totals in this piece include all three unless stated otherwise.

Regional aggregation:

• Munster — Cork City, Cork County, Kerry, Limerick, Clare/Tipperary
• Connacht/Ulster — Donegal, Galway, Mayo/Roscommon/Longford, Sligo/Leitrim
• Dublin — the six Dublin Metropolitan Region divisions
• Leinster (excluding Dublin) — Louth/Cavan/Monaghan, Kildare/Carlow, Waterford/Kilkenny, Laois/Offaly, Meath/Westmeath, Wexford/Wicklow

Garda divisions don't follow provincial boundaries, so divisions have been allocated to the province containing the majority of their population. That means Cavan and Monaghan sit within the Leinster grouping, Waterford sits within Leinster, and Donegal and Longford sit within the Connacht/Ulster grouping.

Small numbers: Percentage changes for aggravated burglary and possession with intent are reported at national and regional level only. Divisional counts for these offence types are too low to support percentage comparison.

Recorded crime statistics are published by the CSO under reservation.