Wexford councillors call on Justice Minister to publish nationality and ethnicity of criminals to ‘dispel myths’ around immigrants

By Simon Bourke, Wexford People

With no statistical evidence to prove that the rise in crime is linked to immigration, Wexford Sinn Féin councillor Tom Forde has called on Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan to publish data detailing the nationality and ethnicity of criminals.

Speaking at the September meeting of Wexford County Council (WCC), Cllr Forde said such a measure would “improve transparency and public confidence in official crime statistics”.

A motion submitted by Cllr Forde and Sinn Féin colleague Aoife Rose O’Brien requested that State agencies develop and publish “anonymised, aggregated statistical data on recorded crime, including violent and sexual offences, broken down by nationality and, where lawfully collected and statistically robust, ethnicity.”

Stating that this data would allow for evidence-based policymaking and “informed public debate”, the councillors noted that other nations in Europe already publish information of this nature.

“The UK collect and publish data on this, Germany and some of the Scandinavian nations do similar,” said Cllr Forde. “If we did this it would dispel a lot of myths. We could use the information to do work in the communities where the issues are originating.

“In an ideal world we wouldn’t need a motion like this, but unfortunately we do. There are a lot of lies and misinformation being put out into the public domain by those with a vested interest.

“We’re constantly told by An Garda Siochána that there’s no link between immigration and the rise in crime; so, we need some clarity on where the crime in our society is stemming from.”

The motion was seconded by Cllr Craig Doyle and will now be forwarded to the minister’s office for consideration.