Women are increasingly the victims of assault in Ireland, despite the number of serious crimes falling in the first quarter of the year.New crime data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows the number of women who were assaulted, received threats or were harassed rose 8 per cent in the first three months of the year.A total of 2,460 women suffered such crimes in the quarter, an increase from the 2,174 in the same period last year. The number of male victims of assault was largely static, increasing just 1.2 per cent – mostly due to a minor increase in assaults against those aged 18-29.The increase in violence against women comes as the overall rate of serious crimes fell. The CSO believes assault data could be underreported. It is based on the number of incidents recorded by gardaí in their intelligence system, Pulse.A crime incident is classified as an event where one or more offences are committed by the same offender, or group, at the same time and place.CSO statistician Jim Dalton said there is “likely to be an element of underreporting in many crime types”. These include assault, fraud and sex crimes, he said. Homicide and related offences were down 27 per cent in the 12 months ending in the first quarter of the year. The number of homicides alone halved on a quarterly basis, from 20 down to just 10 this year. Sexual offences were down 15 per cent on an annualised basis. Organised crimes and offences against the Government and justice procedure were down 7 per cent, and burglaries were down 9 per cent. Dalton said crime incidents fell for six of the 15 offence groups.A number of crime types saw minimal increases, but, on a quarterly basis, the number of kidnappings and related offences in the period rose by 65 per cent.The number of incidents is small, so any increase will see a dramatic percentage rise, the CSO said. In the first three months of 2025, 25 kidnappings were recorded, rising by 17 to 43 incidents in the same period this year.Thefts remained the most commonly recorded crime in Ireland. The number of recorded incidents increased by 975 to 17,676 thefts or related crimes in the period, a 6 per cent increase.Drug offences rose from 3,963 to 4,521 in the first quarter of the year, a 14 per cent increase.The level of fraud offences recorded by An Garda Síochána rose by more than 21 per cent to 3,466 from 2,856 in the first quarter of 2025.The CSO cautioned that this figure is distorted by a backlog in processing suspected fraud crime incidents reported to the Garda by banks.