Gun Safes, Gun Cabinets And Strongrooms

Certified Safes Ireland™ only supply gun safes and strongrooms that have been certified to European standards.

 Future-proof your investment

All Certified Safes Ireland™ gun cabinets, safes and strongrooms are certified to accredited European standards that far exceed current BS7558 requirements, come with electronic locking as standard and can be retro-fitted for monitoring and time locks to future proof against the inevitable alignment of Irish gun regulations with the rest of Europe. 

For the home user, as our gun safes are certified to EN1143-1 they can also double as facilities for the insured protection of amounts of cash and other valuables.

Accredited certified burglary resistance is your best possible defence against having valuable firearms stolen, which apart from the cost, disruption and embarrassment such a loss may cause, can present serious challenges to maintaining your firearms license.

 Ireland's outdated gun regulations

When Ireland’s Firearms Expert Committee was established in June 2022 it included representatives from the legal profession, firearms dealers, An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, it did not include someone with expertise in European Standards for the secure storage of firearms and knowledge of related regulations and best practice in the rest of Europe. The result of this oversight is that despite having produced two reports, the committee did not have the necessary expertise to have realised that Statutory Instrument No: 307 of 2009 - Firearms (Secure Accommodation) Order, 2009, which is repeatedly referenced in their reports, is the core reason Ireland’s firearms regulations are so out of line with European norms and woefully outdated.

Statutory Instrument No: 307 relies on British Standard 7558 “Specification for gun cabinets”, an extremely outdated standard from 1992. BS7558 refers to a “cabinet” not a “safe”, which can be as light as a 2 mm sheet steel construction, and quite unbelievably, can even be secured by padlock. Additionally, what constitutes a secure “gun cabinet” to BS7558 relies on subjective judgement rather than an accredited certification. 

The reliance on this outdated British Standard for the secure storage of firearms instead of European burglary resistance standards like EN1143-1 (the safe standard) or EN14450 (the secure cabinet standard), has not only created fundamental discrepancies in firearm security practices and regulations in Ireland but while other European countries adhere to stringent European standards, Irish gun owners are still being advised to seek products compliant with an antiquated British Standard from 1992, a situation which, it has to be mentioned, may also place European manufacturers of certified firearm secure storage products at a very distinct competitive disadvantage.

Aligning firearms regulations with European norms is long overdue in Ireland, while enhancing the knowledge base within the Firearms Expert Committee to include expertise in European Standards in relation to the subject is imperative. This adjustment would not only ensure compliance with European regulations but bolster firearm security across Ireland, aligning it with the higher standards and ease of verification followed in the rest of Europe.

 Contradictory firearms regulations for gun dealers

S.I. No. 646/2017 regulations for the "Storage of Firearms and Ammunition by Firearms Dealers" came into effect in 2019 and requires firearms dealers to have a "manufactured steel door to fulfil the requirements of EN1627” or an "equivalent". It is also required that the door in question is fitted with a time lock. 

The problem with this requirement is European standard EN1627 covers "requirements and classification systems for the burglar resistant characteristics of pedestrian door-sets", not  strong room doors, so unlike strongroom doors EN1627 doors are not designed to accommodate a time lock. This makes fitting a time lock to an EN1627 door not only likely more expensive than simply buying an EN1143-1 Strongroom Door in the first place but also likely to invalidate the certification requirements the regulations aim to fulfil. 

This brings us to the "or equivalent" part of the legislation, where the final judgement of what constitutes an “equivalent” to EN1627 rests with An Garda Síochána rather than accredited European testing and certification. Not an ideal state of affairs when you consider 70% of all secure storage products tested in accredited European labs fail on the first attempt. 

As for fitting a time lock to anything other than a certified strongroom door, one has to question just how long a time lock is likely to delay would-be thieves if it is fitted to a cobbled together steel door?  A strongroom door certified to EN1143-1 will not only have multi-point locking and a strengthened carbide steel protection plate protecting the lock mount but will also have an average of three anti-drill mechanisms that will re-lock a door if it is attacked.

As BS7558 is an antiquated British Standard for cabinets from 1992, the standard not only allows gun cabinets to be secured by padlock but also allows for construction far lighter than the lowest security level to be found in a European certified gun cabinet (EN11450 Security Level S1) while the fact S.I. No. 646/2017 regulations stipulate British rather than European standards has obvious anti-competitive implications, as no European manufacturer can be expected to be producing products to an outdated, inadequate and obscure UK standard.

 For free, confidential expert advice call: +353 1 7076011

Certified Safes Ireland™ in-house advisor on keeping jewellery, watch collections, goods, cash, documents and data, safe, secure, yet readily accessible, is Alan Donohoe Redd.

Alan Donohoe Redd is a member of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) Working Group responsible for writing European Standards for safes, strongrooms (vaults), secure cabinets and physical data protection for the European Union and a member of the U.S. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Standards Technical Panel TC72 covering standards for fire resistance of record protection devices. Alan is also a registered NATO supplier and a longstanding member of the European Security Systems Association. Alan has a vast range of experience spanning almost 40 years encompassing installation of safes, strongrooms, physical data protection, CCTV, alarms, access control, secure storage control systems and Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) specification, design and installation. 

An expert on standards and fraud issues related to secure storage in Europe, the UK and the use of asbestos in European safe and cabinet manufacturing, Alan has had articles related to these subjects published by The Law Society Gazette and Irish Broker Magazine, has forced retractions of multiple false claims related to secure storage offerings to the public and has been pivotal in having misleading standards and practices recognised and withdrawn in Ireland, the UK and at a European level.

Alan's seminars on safes, strongrooms and high net worth secure storage have been part of Continuing Professional Development for underwriters and insurers having been awarded CPD points by the Insurance Institute of Ireland and the Chartered Insurance Institute (UK).

 Alan's expertise has been relied on by:

N.A.T.O. Europe, The U.S. Air Force (Europe), The National Treasury Management Agency (Ireland), The Department Of Communications (NCSC Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Revenue Commissioners, Electricity Supply Board (Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Danish Defence Forces (Afghanistan), PayPal (Worldwide), Grant Thornton, The Insurance Institute of Ireland, The Royal College Of Surgeons, BFC Bank, Interxion Data Centres, The Private Security Authority, Isle of Man Gold Bullion, Brown Thomas, Bvlgari, Boodles, Druids Glen, The Shelbourne Hotel, and many others ....