DUBLIN, June 27 (Xinhua) -- There were altogether 213,881 recorded crime cases in Ireland in the first quarter of this year, up 7.18 percent or 14,344 cases year on year from a year earlier, according to the statistics released by the Irish national statistics bureau CSO on Wednesday.

Increases were witnessed in all groups of crimes except homicide offences, which saw a 17.2 percent drop from 87 homicide cases in the first quarter of 2017 to 72 in the first quarter of 2018, showed the CSO statistics.

The sharpest increase was seen in the number of the kidnapping and related offences, which jumped 16.1 percent from 112 cases in Q1 2017 to 130 cases in Q1 2018, followed by robbery, extortion and hijacking offences (up 15.9 percent), fraud, deception and related offences (up 15.9 percent), and sexual offences (up 14.7 percent), according to the CSO.

During the first quarter of this year, theft and related offences ranked in the first place in term of its numbers (64,423 cases), followed by public order and other social code offences (29,078 cases), and damage to property and to the environment (22,046 cases), said the CSO.

This is the second quarterly release of recorded crimes in Ireland by the CSO since the recent decision to resume publication of crime statistics in the country.

The CSO said all the crime statistics are sourced from the police department and they are subject to revision due to the fact that the quality of these statistics does not meet the standards required of official statistics published by the CSO.