Why is Ireland so dangerous

Herbal Deity

Anecdotes are very weak evidence...

However, I'm 20, have been going out during the day in town for 6/7 years and going out at night for 3. I have never experienced anything any more severe than the odd harmless idiot making a smart comment.

I went to Biarritz for 3 weeks when I was 17. One night several of my friends had their bags stolen on the beach, another night I was mugged on the way home.

I would perceive Dublin as being quite safe.

masteroftherealm

supersaint3 wrote: »

that's such a simplistic attitude master. What about the resourcing of the police? etc. it's all very well to want to have a garda on every corner, but will the govt pay for it? will the people of the country when they're asked to ? No.

Heheh thats my exact problem. The government should be paying for it, the people should want it. Why does every taxpayer in this country think their paying taxes for? Certainly not for infrastructure, policing, international aid relief, healthcare, business support. It doesnt exist, simply we pay taxes for no return in this country. I take issue with that.

Lockstep

Meh, I lived in Brussels for 7 years and never had any problems myself, although muggings were extremely commonplace among youngsters.
Would view it as more dangerous than Ireland anyway.

Dublin is alright, anytime I've been out at night there it's been grand.

While I notice a lot less violence and organised crime in Ireland than anywhere I've lived on the continent, Ireland seems to have a lot more low-end loutishness, especially at night. Nothing too bad but I work in a Belgian pub and have never seen any fights, people throwing up, passed out in the street, either in the pub, when walking home from work or from just being out in general (ok, did see one guy passed out but he was English)

Hotblack Desiato

If you think Dublin is rough, try Tullow on a Saturday night, I'd rather walk along Pearse St at 3am in a pink tutu than go back there again.

Dannyboy83

If you don't include pikeys, I've only witnessed serious violence on a handful of occasions in Cork among normal people, but I'm bound to have seen more violence than others due to the job I was doing.

If you include the pikeys, yea, well.....they live up to their reputation at every given opportunity in my experience.

dRNk SAnTA

Dublin isn't really that bad. I think it sometimes looks worse here than other cities because Dublin has a lot of council flats in and around the city center where as in places like France they are well out in the suburbs and the city is the affluent place.

anonymous_joe

Some of the parts of the Netherlands I've been to were fairly dicey. Definitely wouldn't want to have been to Rotterdam or Amsterdam without a Dutch person to make sure I didn't go anywhere silly and get my head kicked in.

Compared to somewhere like Brazil where I've been, in Dublin you're a lot more likely to be punched in the head by a randomer (which has happened to me once, where some lad hit me in the back of hte head and ran on.) but a lot less likely to be stabbed, shot, whatever.

Cianos

If you get in to trouble elsewhere, it's for a reason. In Dublin you get in trouble simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

monosharp

What absolute nonsense by most of the posters here, have any of ye actually left home for more then a 2 week holiday to the Canaries ?

I've lived all over Europe and a lot of Asia and Ireland (UK too) is a scumbag hole compared to anywhere else.

Of course, in Europe, you can find no go areas which are at least comparable to places at home. The difference is of course that the scumbags in these areas don't migrate into the 'good' areas in European mainland countries.

Go for a pint in Dublin at night and repeat the process in Vienna or Paris or Lisbon or Porto or Prague etc and no one could deny the difference.

You know what the major difference is in my opinion ? Irish (and British) people go out, get sloshed ASAP and then act the bollox on the street. European people go out to drink and eat with friends.

Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Cork, Sligo etc centre after closing time is like a bloody war zone compared to other cities in Europe and Asia.

Right now I live in a city of 10 million people in a metropolitan area with a population of nearly 30 million people. I go out almost every single night until the wee hours and in 2 years I have seen a total of 2 fights. I have been in 2 arguments myself (apart from those fights) with surprise surprise, one Irish lad and one Welsh lad over here and I don't even usually associate with the ex-pat community that much.

Violent crime is practically non-existent, speaking of course from my perspective of Irelands scumbag rich environment.

And as for your statistics, you can stick those up your arse.

Every one of us who has lived abroad for any extended period of time knows the reason those statistics make Ireland look relatively peaceful. Because the vast majority of crimes go unreported in Ireland and the cops are fecking useless.

I could go out in an Irish town at night and encounter 5-10 fights/arguments and none of them will go reported and not a cop in sight. And even if by some miracle someone reported it, the cops would still most likely turn up too late or turn a deaf ear if they could at all ignore it. I've seen guards walking the street and seeing a fight in process turning and walking the other way. I have worked in bars and I have called the useless pricks to come over only to have to sort the situation out myself or wait for an hour or 2 until 'Paddy gets back from the shop' or 'Seamus gets back with the patrol car'.

If the same thing happened here you'd have the cops involved within minutes in every single instance.

Heres a real life example for you.

My house was robbed when I was living in Dublin. Heres what happened.
- I called the cops. 2 hours later a patrol car with 2 guards arrived.
- They came to the door and asked me what happened, i.e > Asked me the exact same thing which I had already told them on the phone. They wrote it in their little notebook, perhaps because whoever answered my phonecall in the station couldn't write. They told me the forensic gang will be out later and they left.
- The next day, let me repeat that, the NEXT day the forensic crowd came to take fingerprints etc.

My ex-girlfriends house was robbed in a small city here in Asia (3 million)
- She called the cops. 10 minutes later and 2 cops were there, one stayed with us and the other went patrolling around the area. 10 minutes after that the forensic gang arrived, took fingerprints off every possible entry area and the other cops went interviewing the neighbors.
- The other two lads then went to the other buildings in the immediate area again, talking to the neighbors and taking copies of any and all CCTV footage.

So to summarise;

Ireland is a scumbag hole because of the culture, the lack of penalties for acting like this and the complete ineffectiveness of our police force.

And when I lived in Ireland I thought that this was normal everywhere.

lightening

Actually, I really should stop going to the Canaries for two weeks every year. Monosharp has opened my eyes to the reality of what a scary place Ireland is. He's so cool, lives in a foreign city with 10 million other super cool people, has a girlfriend and doesn't have to see "5-10 fights" every night like I do.

Boastful, assuming about other people, resentful bull****e post.

Terrontress

lightening wrote: »

Actually, I really should stop going to the Canaries for two weeks every year. Monosharp has opened my eyes to the reality of what a scary place Ireland is. He's so cool, lives in a foreign city with 10 million other super cool people, has a girlfriend and doesn't have to see "5-10 fights" every night like I do.

Boastful, assuming about other people, resentful bull****e post.

That's a bit harsh to be honest. I have lived for periods of over a year in Germany, London, Belfast and Dublin and can largely back up what he says.

There are many Irish people who consider themselves to be seasoned citizens of the world because they spent a gap year going round Australia, working in hourly paid jobs to get money to sit in pubs full of Irish people and talk about how great Ireland is, get sick, have a fight, try to score. They then come back to Ireland saying "I've seen the world, I didn't like it, Dublin is much better than those foreign countries".

Don't get me wrong, a lot of my experiences overseas have been as a tourist, but in my 8 years in Dublin I have seen untold fights, many of them vicious right in the middle of the road. I haven't felt threatened and have just walked on past. But that kind of behaviour would not be seen as frequently elsewhere.

Angry Troll

interesting thread here...i have in fact been wondering about just that myself for quite a while...i am german and have lived and worked in dublin for over six years now…and let me add i still like living here, all things considered…
but one of the things that never fail to infuriate me, besides the rip-off and some others, is the extreme number of skangers and generally scumbags here in dublin, basically anywhere you go, and all that comes with it like violence, thievery, beggary, littering and puking all over the place and all that…and this is something you simply do not see in any german city at any remotely comparable level and normally limited to anti-social hotspots outside city centres…and even there it is rather rare at that extreme level…
just what exactly is the issue in this country…i don’t get it…

lightening

Terrontress wrote: »

That's a bit harsh to be honest.

Yeah, it is a bit I guess. Apologies Monosharp. There is a bad element in Dublin, I'm not denying it. I don't consider myself to be a seasoned citizen of the world, but I have seen enough to realise that Dublin is a safe place to be.

But this anecdotal stuff, 5 to 10 fights witnessed ANY time you go out in Ireland? Give me a break.

Assuming people that like Dublin and Ireland go on two weeks holiday every year in the Canaries or have done the year Australia thing and think they know it all is pure ignorant.

thebman

Angry Troll wrote: »

interesting thread here...i have in fact been wondering about just that myself for quite a while...i am german and have lived and worked in dublin for over six years now…and let me add i still like living here, all things considered…
but one of the things that never fail to infuriate me, besides the rip-off and some others, is the extreme number of skangers and generally scumbags here in dublin, basically anywhere you go, and all that comes with it like violence, thievery, beggary, littering and puking all over the place and all that…and this is something you simply do not see in any german city at any remotely comparable level and normally limited to anti-social hotspots outside city centres…and even there it is rather rare at that extreme level…
just what exactly is the issue in this country…i don’t get it…

Extreme drinking culture IMHO. The drunker you get and the more crazy the crap you get up to, its like a higher honor to some people and I was drunk is the excuse the next day.

Then you have some people that are just hell bent on destroying everything decent in the country like amenities built for their own free use. I suspect that most of those people have nothing else to do during the day and are most of the same people that want to live on the dole their whole lives and then claim society has it in for them and that they are hard done by and also given the rest of the unemployed people a bad name that have good reasons for not being in work like genuine disability claimers or the recently unemployed.

monosharp

lightening wrote: »

Actually, I really should stop going to the Canaries for two weeks every year. Monosharp has opened my eyes to the reality of what a scary place Ireland is. He's so cool, lives in a foreign city with 10 million other super cool people, has a girlfriend and doesn't have to see "5-10 fights" every night like I do. .

I said;

monosharp wrote:

I could go out in an Irish town at night and encounter 5-10 fights/arguments and none of them will go reported and not a cop in sight.

Jumpy

Ireland has no upper/middle/lower class area boundaries. You have a bad area next to a good one. This is why even though the overall scumminess is lower you see it far more often as classes cross over.

Where I lived in Sydney there was one robbery in 17 years. This is a suburb like any other in Sydney (it certainly isnt countryside) but it is buffered by other suburbs and it is too difficult for "bad area wanderers" to visit.

In Dublin and Limerick they just have to drive down the road.

Ireland has lower crime, but much higher visibility of it.

monosharp

lightening wrote: »

Yeah, it is a bit I guess. Apologies Monosharp. There is a bad element in Dublin, I'm not denying it. I don't consider myself to be a seasoned citizen of the world, but I have seen enough to realise that Dublin is a safe place to be.

I didn't say it was dangerous although that is in the thread title. I said Ireland is a scumbag hole compared to just about any European mainland country or Asian country I've lived in.

You wouldn't encounter 1/4 of the crap you would in most other countries in 5 years that you could encounter in Ireland in 5 months.

But this anecdotal stuff, 5 to 10 fights witnessed ANY time you go out in Ireland? Give me a break.

I said 'could' encounter, I was actually making a point about the complete uselessness of the guards.

Assuming people that like Dublin and Ireland go on two weeks holiday every year in the Canaries or have done the year Australia thing and think they know it all is pure ignorant.

I never said I didn't like Ireland or Dublin. Of course I like my country, but I also face up to the reality that its full of scumbags and 3/4's of the crap that goes on there would not be tolerated in almost any other country.

Well I never said that they knew it all but I would agree that the majority of them do in fact think that.

Spending a year drinking with ex-pats in ex-pat bars does not mean you know f-all about the country your living in.

ednwireland

i always thought ireland had a relatively low number pof police per capita BUT this graph seems to disagree
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pol_percap-crime-police-per-capita


just you never see them

mind you ny only experience of the police in the uk was after an attemped burgalary the SOCO turned up the following day (not much use on the front of a terraced house)

Angry Troll

ednwireland wrote: »

i always thought ireland had a relatively low number pof police per capita BUT this graph seems to disagree
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pol_percap-crime-police-per-capita


just you never see them

[...]

interesting...might help if police here in ireland had guns to begin with...

Terrontress

ednwireland wrote: »

i always thought ireland had a relatively low number pof police per capita BUT this graph seems to disagree
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pol_percap-crime-police-per-capita


just you never see them

mind you ny only experience of the police in the uk was after an attemped burgalary the SOCO turned up the following day (not much use on the front of a terraced house)

I don't think that anyone would hold up the UK as a model of efficiency and orderliness. Some housing estates in England seem to be sheer lunacy. There have been numerous stories this year of peoples' deaths through anti-social behaviour not being addressed. In particular there was that lady who committed suicide with her disabled daughter after being tormented for years and there was the woman who had the firework through the door and died in the inevitable house fire.

the_syco

An under-18 scumbag can beat the crap out of you, and not get done for it. F**k the police. What are they going to doig I smack you around? Nothing. So we don't fear the police.

And thus they'll do it.

They need to fear the police, and then maybe more of them will follow the law.

bill_ashmount

20 years going out in Cork city, only seen a handfull of fights. I don't know what any of ye are on about.

lightening

monosharp wrote: »

I said 'could' encounter

Could, should, would, might etc... So you actually have never seen five to ten fights in one night in Ireland?

You are beginning to sound like the very people you are talking about! Living away from home, thinking you know it all, getting in to fights with other ex-pats in ex-pat bars to be honest!

jonny72

lightening wrote: »

Could, should, would, might etc... So you actually have never seen five to ten fights in one night in Ireland?

You are beginning to sound like the very people you are talking about! Living away from home, thinking you know it all, getting in to fights with other ex-pats in ex-pat bars to be honest!

In Dublin, we had a problem with a gang of about 20 kids (I'd say around 10 years old) walking around dragging sticks and golfclubs with them, they smashed all our windows in during the winter, my friend legged it downstairs to 'talk to them' and we stopped him because we knew if we responded the situation would only get worse.

My family house is like fort knox, but its been broken into 3 times and 2 further attempts, the last attempt was by a guy in a motorcycle helmet who had a pitchfork to 'take care of' our dog.

Have you ever seen two women fighting? I have, several times (mostly at the top of OConnell street)

Sit in any pub or office in Ireland and all these stories will come out, or perhaps we are just immune to it and block it all out, we don't even notice how many pubs/places/areas we avoid, we just accept the scumbags and the vandalism .. however when you come abroad and really live in a 'normal' country that you realise that all that ****e rarely happens over here, that you can have a free concert with cheap beer in the central park until 5am without a single fight or incident. I somehow don't think it would pass off so peacefully in Dublin or Limerick.

Liam Byrne

CamperMan wrote: »

you must live in a rough part of Ireland... maybe Limerick

:rolleyes: Dublin passed us out earlier this year, remember ?

MysticalRain

After spending a few years abroad, and returning to Ireland, I felt noticeably less secure on the streets of Dublin. You will always have scumbags in every country, but I think the difference with Ireland is that the scumbags and junkies are not confined to specific areas. You are just as likely to be attacked by some scumbag on O'Connell Street as you would be if you took a wrong turn down some dark alley. I don't expect the cops to be able to police every area. But the least they could do would be to keep the city center clean of scumbags. Luckily, I've never been mugged or beaten up. But I did have a few close shaves and I do a good job of watching my back.

DonnieBrasco

i must admit i've never felt safer during my time in scandanavia and germany.
no matter what time of day or night, many times wandering the streets alone.
had some very close calls in dublin and some of the english cities. have had relatives and friends pay the price for being at the wrong place at the wrong time in dublin and in england.

maybe its a case of the grass is always greener but personally i dont think so.
I think in the year 292 our decendants were dropped on this island because of continued anti social behavior on the mainland !

i'd start with removing supermacs and abrakebabra !

The Councillor

In Denmark the biker drug gangs have been to known to use rocket lauchers to take each other out!. The last time I was in Copenhagen there were a few people drinking beer on the train, which really surprised me, one was a little old dear!! This was in the morning.

Cool Mo D

Here's a nasty example from scumbaggery from the continent:

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090408-paris-night-bus-assault-caught-cctv

The article claims it's a common thing.

I would agree to an extent that there is a generally high level of drunken nastiness on the streets of Ireland on a Friday or Saturday night, higher then you'd generally see on the continent, but you're unlikely to be randomly assaulted, it's ugly behaviour, but not really dangerous.

Also, just because you see teenagers in tracksuits sitting on a corner does not mean they're planning on robbing you, even if they are drinking cans.

Paulj

I think we're talking about regular street crime experienced by regular people, not organised drug crime/feuds etc... thats a different story altogether and affects normal people less.

Regular street crime definately seems to be worse in Ireland. I've lived in Tipperary Town, Limerick , Dublin and Stockholm. And would rate them in that order (bad -> good) for visible street crime. Think i've only seen 1 or 2 fights in dublin, and that was drunken behaviour. Tipp was rediculous. Could be attacked completely unprovoked there. Went to college in limerick and found it worse than dublin, but it definately doesn't deserve the bad rep that some people here on boards give it.

One of the biggest problem regarding the drunken hassle you can get is the closing hours. It needs to be totally relaxed. The problem is everyone coming out onto the streets at the same time all competing for food, taxis and women :P. What do you expect with stupid licensing laws. The feckin vinters prevented the Cafe Bar license thing from going through a few years ago. That would've helped matters somewhat. Its easy to see who controls the country!! Business interests come first, people's safety and peace of mind comes last.

I agree with the poster who mentioned that the poor and middle class areas here are situated closer to each other also. This was particularly visible in limerick i think.