Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, has admitted that neither her Department nor An Garda Síochána are able to provide figures showing how many unsolved homicides have taken place in Ireland in the past almost 30 years.
In response to questions from independent TD Carol Nolan, the Minister also said she was unable to provide statistics on the number of unsolved murders of women
Deputy Nolan had asked the Minister through a written parliamentary question in January about the number of unsolved homicides in Ireland from 1995 to date along with the breakdown, by gender, of the victims for each year.
In a response on February 28, the minister said that the information had never been collated within the Garda or the Department of Justice – and added that she had been advised it would “require a disproportionate amount of Garda time and resources to compile”.
“As you will appreciate the manner in which all Garda investigations are conducted – including unsolved murders – and how resources are deployed are matters for the Garda Commissioner and his management team. Garda authorities advise me that the work of the Homicide Investigation Review Team remains ongoing,” the Minister said.
“I am further advised that the information requested is not readily available and would require a disproportionate amount of Garda time and resources to compile”, she added.
“I also understand that there is no gender analysis available for undetected homicides specifically,” Minister McEntee admitted.
She told Deputy Nolan: “As you may also be aware, 2016-2022 statistics regarding victims of homicide and other offences, including the sex of the victim, are available from the Central Statistics Office (CSO)”.
In response, the Independent Deputy for Laois Offaly said: ‘It is a matter of deep surprise and indeed disappointment to me that data on the number of unresolved homicides is not readily available.
‘This is particularly the case given the significant emphasis in recent years on the issue of violence against women.
‘In fact, I would go further and characterise the information deficit as acutely embarrassing for a modern police force. This points towards a level of disarray that will do nothing to inspire confidence in how crimes of this magnitude are collated.
‘We are not talking here about data hidden away in archives from the era of the foundation of the State, but about murders that took place in recent decades.
‘I would have thought such information would have been readily available.’
According to the Women’s Aid Ireland Femicide Watch over 100 women have lost their lives in a violent crime since 2012.
A Department of Justice spokesman told the Mail on Sunday at the weekend that: ‘An Garda Síochána would hold information relating to homicide investigations and the status of those investigations.
‘As advised to Deputy Nolan in the minister’s response of February 28, the minister was advised by An Garda Síochána that the specific data requested was not readily available and collation of the data in the manner and timeframe requested in the PQ would involve an inordinate expenditure of Garda time and resources.
A Garda spokesperson also said that the PULSE system “only came into existence in the late 90s/early 2000s” and crimes before that date were not directly compared to those after that date.