“Hardened career criminal with hundreds of convictions under the belts” are being let out on bail every time they are caught, a Galway West TD has told the Dáil.

Deputy Noel Grealish (pictured) said radical reform is needed for the country’s bail system after pointing out to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar during Leaders’ Questions last week that the number of crimes committed by offenders while out on bail has soared in recent years,

Deputy Grealish revealed that new figures he had received from the Central Statistics Office showed that more than 275,000 crimes had been committed in the past ten years by people who were out on bail, already having being charged with other offences.

“These crimes range from murders to theft, sexual offences to burglary. And the situation is getting worse.

“In 2022, for which statistics have only recently become available, there were almost 32,500 crimes committed by offenders while on bail – that is a staggering 41% increase on the total of ten years previous and amounts to about 90 crimes every single day of the year.

“In the past decade, this country has seen a doubling of the incidence of some crimes committed by people out on bail – including attempts or threats to murder, assaults, drunken driving and drug offences.

“We have also suffered substantial increases in public order offences (up 75%), theft (up 72%), damage to property (up 53%) and burglary (up 50%) by these people,” he said.

Deputy Grealish pointed out that over that ten-year period, recorded crime incidents, where at least one offender was on bail, included 85 homicides; 268 sexual offences; more than 10,000 attempts or threats to murder and assaults etc; 71,000 thefts; 57,000 public order offences; 26,000 drug offences; and 14,000 burglaries.

In reply, the Taoiseach said that the presumption of innocence was a cornerstone of our legal system and was a fundamental principle behind the right to a fair trial.
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