A Fox News show has reported on Dublin as being among the most dangerous cities in Europe, basing some of its claim on the findings of a betting website.
An item on Monday’s Will Cain Show, which featured media commentator and author Douglas Murray talking about open borders migration, claimed Dublin had gone from being one of the safest cities in Europe to one of its most dangerous.
An on-screen graphic linked to a headline on the Sunday World website from January 2024 – “Dublin ranks among the top ten most dangerous major cities in Europe, survey claims”.
The source for the Sunday World article was the Online Betting Guide (OLBG) in a survey entitled European Nightlife Index Casinos.
RM Block
In it, Dublin was ranked ninth in Europe with Birmingham, Naples and Paris placed among the most dangerous.
The Sunday World article stressed that OLBG did not include the methodology it used.
An OLBG spokeswoman told The Irish Times the figures came from another website, Numbeo, which describes itself as the “world’s largest cost of living database and a crowdsourced global resource for quality of life data”.
The results of the OLBG survey were posted by Conor McGregor on X on February 26th this year and quoted by Fox News presenter Will Cain on Monday’s show.
Yesterday, Trump singled out Irish Pharmaceuticals for new Tariffs.
— Nick Delehanty (@Nick_Delehanty) August 6, 2025
Also yesterday, Fox News did a hit job on Ireland… citing 2024 headlines about crime statistics and bringing on Douglas Murray as a panel guest to discuss it.
If your business depends on American tourists…… pic.twitter.com/XMMHg7dZ1c
Other crime figures quoted on the show cited the Central Statistics Office (CSO) as a source. One stated that robbery had increased by 18 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 and violent crime by 10 per cent in the same period.
CSO crime statistician Felix Coleman questioned the Fox News figures as it was unclear what the robbery numbers from Q1 2024 were being compared to.
There was a decrease in robberies from 1,038 in Q1 2023 to 1,009 in Q1 2024, a fall of 2.6 per cent, rather than the increase of 18 per cent reported by Fox. The Q1 figures for 2025 show 824 robberies, a decrease of 18 per cent.
Mr Coleman said there was no category in the CSO statistics for violent crime and it was unclear where those figures on Fox News came from.
The show further stated there had been a 114 per cent increase in murder and assault attempts in Dublin in 2024, citing figures from the Garda Dublin Metropolitan Region, but they did not say which period they were comparing the data with.
A Gript website article from March this year stated there had been a 114 per cent increase (Gript revised it upwards to 131 per cent) in attempts/ threats to murder, assaults, harassments and related offences within the Dublin Metropolitan Region between 2003 and 2024, rising from 3,685 to 8,500.
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The same article stated the number of recorded crimes in Dublin had fallen over the past two decades, by approximately 7.5 per cent.
The Fox News show correctly stated there had been a 98,700 increase in the population between April 2023 and April 2024, up 1.9 per cent, the highest since 2008. That comprised of net inward migration of 79,3000 combined with a natural increase (births less deaths) of 19,400.
According to the CSO, 149,000 immigrants came to Ireland between April 2023 and April 2024. There were 86,800 immigrants who were not returning Irish, or EU or UK citizens.
Of the 86,800, nearly 50,000 were Ukrainian, Indian or Brazilian citizens who have arrived in Ireland; fleeing the Russian invasion in the case of Ukrainians, or through work visas in the case of those coming from India or Brazil.
Mr Murray claimed the population and alleged crime surge in Ireland was the result of people in the Middle East and Africa coming to Europe to seek the best welfare and housing supports. He provided no evidence to back up his claim.
Fox News has been contacted for comment.
