A THIRD OF victims of dangerous driving offences leading to death in 2023 were children.

The Central Statistics Office today released its findings on recorded crime victims last year.

It found that of the 28 victims of reported incidents of dangerous driving leading to death in 2023, nine (32%) were under 18 when the offence occurred.

Just over half (53%) were 45 or over when the incident occurred, and 14% were aged between 18 and 29.

Close to two-thirds (64%) of the victims were male, while 36% were female.

The CSO also released data on recorded suspected offenders in 2022.

The suspected offender statistics are only published up to 2022 in order to allow time for criminal investigations to progress.

This data shows that the vast majority of suspected or detected offenders of dangerous driving leading to death were male.

Of the 27 incidents in 2022 of dangerous driving leading to death, 23 (85%) were males while four (15%) were female.

The data is based on recorded crime data collected by An Garda Síochána on their PULSE system.

Other key findings included in the data was that just over four in five (81%) of victims of reported incidents of sexual offences last year were female, and close to half (49%) of victims were under 18 when the incident happened.

And data from 2022 on recorded suspected offenders shows that in 71% of cases, the suspected offender was known to the victims of detected sexual offences.

Virtually all (99%) of suspected offenders of detected sexual offences recorded in 2022 were male, and this was also the case for the previous two years.

The 2022 data also shows that when it comes to attempts or threats to murder, assault, and harassment, the suspected offender was known to the victim in two-thirds of incidents.

And while the majority of victims of assault last year were male, at 60%, two-thirds of the victims of harassment and related offences were female.