Waterford has recorded a decrease in the rate of burglaries over the last 12 months.
Recent CSO Statistics show there has been a 9% decrease in the Waterford Gardaí division.
According to An Garda Síochána, 26% of burglars enter homes through the back door.
Speaking to WLR News, Sergeant Deirdre O'Neill, Crime Prevention Officer from Waterford Garda Station had this advice.
"We're delighted that the rate of burglaries is going down because burglaries are a very difficult incident for people to get over", said Sgt. O'Neill.
"It's a real violation of your home - so they're really difficult ones for people to reconcile themselves to. The most significant thing you can do is to check your doors and windows. Good physical security is always paramount."
"Make sure that your doors are locked and if you have a lock that isn't functioning - 100% change it", urged Sgt. O'Neill. They're relatively cheap to get done. You could do them yourself or get a good local locksmith to do that for you.
"Most of the burglaries we see, you're looking at maybe 42-45% of them are going in through the rear of the house. That's either bodily pressure applied to a window or a door or in fact sometimes it's left open. That's probably the key thing and people probably get caught up with alarms and CCTV but always check the doors and windows first."
"If you have a house that's totally in darkness, it's very obvious that there's nobody in the house. So one or two lights and then you do have houses where if there's a load of people living there there's going to be lights on everywhere. There's lots of smart devices that you can get now like a smart clock so you can control the lighting even if you're not home", she explained.
"If you're delayed at work you can still put the lights on via an app on your phone. There are also the old timers that you can just manually adjust and then of course, if you are leaving just click on a switch and the LED bulbs now are cheap to run. So that's a cheap and effective way to make the house look occupied."
