WHO says Ireland is safest country in Europe

Ireland is the least violent country in Europe - based on 2005 figures - according to a new study by the World Health Organisation.
The WHO compared murder and assault rates across 27 European countries.
The Irish rate, 0.32 killings per 100,000 people, contrasted with that of Finland (1.96) and Scotland (1.75) which topped western Europe's violence blacklist.
Malta, with a rate of 0.48, was almost as peaceful as Ireland.

More recent press reports and coverage would suggest that the 2005 figures are no longer valid - a study released earlier this year showing Dublin's murder rate is increasing faster than that of any other European capital city.
At the last WHO conference on violence five years ago, Ireland's murder and assault rate was recorded at 1.13 per 100,000 population.
Irish rates have dropped in each subsequent year, culminating in the low of 0.32 recorded in 2005, the last year for which Europe-wide figures are available.
Many of the murders are confined to gangs in certain areas of Limerick and Dublin.

Scotland's murder rate, the highest in the UK, is blamed on areas of high unemployment in Glasgow, where one third of Scottish murders occur. But Scotland and Finland's murder rates are still low compared to recent EU entrants from the Baltic area.
In Estonia, it is 8.85 per 100,000, while Lithuania has 8.9 and Latvia 10.37.

This year in Ireland there seems to more reports of violence and deaths of natives of Eastern European contries living in Ireland.