Conor McGregor appears to have based one of the key views he expressed during his St Patrick's Day White House visit on a ranking of European cities published by an online gambling company.
In one of the only specific statistics he publicly referenced during comments made over the course of his visit, Mr McGregor said after his meeting with US President Donald Trump that "in ten years, Dublin city centre has gone from one of the most safest cities in Europe to one of the most dangerous."
The basis of the claim appears to be an analysis published in January 2024 by a website called Online Betting Guide titled 'European Nightlife Index Casinos (inc top casino destinations)'.
As part of the guide, the website published a ranking of 50 European cities by 'Safety Score', with Dublin listed ninth from the bottom.
It appears in an effort to gain media attention for the guide a press release was circulated by the site and as a result stories were published by Irish media outlets including The Irish Mirror, Sunday World and Dublin Live.
Stories referencing the ranking included headlines like "Dublin ranks among the top ten most dangerous major cities in Europe," which ran on the Sunday World website on 9 January 2024.
On 26 February this year, Mr McGregor posted an image on Twitter in which the Sunday World headline about the Dublin ranking was placed beside a headline from a 2003 story in the Irish Examiner saying "Dublin one of safest cities in the world."
Noting the contrast in the headlines, and years between the stories, Mr McGregor added the caption "How’re we looking now folks, 2025?"
The image posted by Mr McGregor included two embedded references to two Twitter accounts which appear to be operated by a single individual.
One account is called 'TooWhiteToTweet', where the posts focus on amplifying content about what the owner says is an ongoing 'race war' against white people. The other account has been suspended by X.
Additionally, the 'safety score' used by Online Betting Guide in its ranking appears to be a simple copy of figures posted on a website called Numbeo, which allows anyone to fill in a variety of surveys about cities across the world.
No data is provided on Numbeo for how many users have added their views about specific cities, but the site does include a note saying the numbers it published "may not be as suitable for cross-country comparisons".
How Ireland ranks in available official data
While crime rates in US cities are comparable and regularly generate headlines, academic studies have consistently noted it is particularly complex to compare crime rates in cities in different countries.
This is for a variety of reasons, including the quality of record keeping and data processing within countries, and differences in the rate of recorded crime versus crimes committed, and variance in how the same act may be legally categorised across jurisdictions: what is sexual assault in one country could be listed as rape in another.
Eurostat, the European Commission agency, has published data comparing rates of serious crime on a national level per 100,000 inhabitants. However, it currently only covers until 2020.
It ranks countries' recorded rates per head of population for offences it categorises as theft, sexual violence, sexual assault, rape, and homicide, going back to 2013.
Ireland ranks essentially mid-table in most categories, except homicide where Irish rates are low.
It is worth noting the countries typically above Ireland in other categories are generally considered to have modern record-keeping within their justice and policing systems. Norway and Finland rank above Ireland in all categories, for instance.
Complexity involved in making cross-country - let alone cross-city - comparisons is also clear in the Eurostat data.
In 2018, Sweden changed the legal definition of rape to sex without consent, as a result prosecutors no longer had to prove force or threat of violence. This led to an increase in the number of recorded rape offences, and is widely taken as the reason why Sweden has the highest rate in Europe within the Eurostat dataset.
Additionally, in most categories, Iceland ranks above Ireland. According to other analyses, Iceland and Ireland are among the countries with the best ranking for "societal safety and security" in the world.
While the data has limitations, it does not show evidence of significant increases per head of population in Ireland over the period covered.
Dr Johnny Connolly of the Centre for Crime and Justice and Victim Studies at the School of Law at the University of Limerick says the situation in Dublin specifically is broadly similar.
"I don't think, looking back over the last decade, that the situation in Dublin has changed hugely or that trends have changed dramatically. You know, I really don't think that there's evidence to say that."
He said Irish Central Statistics Office data shows "over the ten years, sort of a downward trend in most offences."
However, he noted that during that ten-year period the CSO flagged concerns about the quality of data provided to it by An Garda Síochána.
"They have on numerous occasions over the last couple of decades been very cautious about how they approach that data, including homicide data, because of a number of issues that they've identified in the way in which that data is recorded and compiled and reported."
Despite that, Dr Connolly said, "I wouldn't see Dublin as an outlier in terms of other European cities."
