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 Ireland's current Statutory Instrument No: 307 of 2009 - Firearms (Secure Accommodation) Order 2009 requirements. All models 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 Ireland's dangerously outdated "gun cabinet" regulations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in their reports, is the core reason Ireland’s firearms regulations are so out of line with European norms and woefully outdated.

Statutory Instrument No: 307 relies on British Standard BS7558 “Specification for gun cabinets”, an extremely outdated standard from 1992.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The reliance on this outdated British Standard for the secure storage of firearms instead of European burglary resistance standards like EN1143-1 (the safe standard) or EN14450 (the secure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.

 Ireland's impossible regulation 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, which are certified to a separate European Standard EN1143-1, EN1627 doors are not designed to accommodate a time lock, in fact fitting a certified time lock to a door certified to EN1627 is technically impossible if the door's certification is to be maintained.

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.

 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 an expert 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 an expert for 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 the longest standing member of the Frankfurt based European Security Systems Association (ESSA) in Ireland. 

Alan has a vast range of experience spanning over 40 years encompassing installation of safes, strongrooms, physical data protection, firearms security, secure storage of pharmaceuticals, security doors and equipment used for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) in government, military and I.T. sectors. He has provided advice to the U.S. Air Force (Europe), An Garda Síochána (Irish Police Service), the Danish Police, and for government projects concerned with high level cyber, physical data and counter electronic eavesdropping security.

An expert on standards and fraud issues related to secure storage in Europe, the UK, and the historical use of asbestos in UK and European safe and cabinet manufacturing, Alan has advised top UK and US law firms and has had articles on standards, fraud and safety issues published by The Law Society Gazette and Irish Broker Magazine as well as being pivotal in having misleading standards and practices recognised and withdrawn in Ireland, the UK and at a European legislative level. Alan has forced retractions of dozens of false claims related to secure storage offerings to the public including some published by the Irish Times in relation to Merrion Vaults and Lloyds of London.

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), An Garda Síochána (Irish police service), The National Treasury Management Agency (Ireland), The Department of Communications (National Cyber Security Centre) (Ireland), The Department of Foreign Affairs (Ireland) The Revenue Commissioners (Ireland), Electricity Supply Board (Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Danish Defence Forces (Afghanistan), PayPal (Worldwide), Grant Thornton, The Insurance Institute of Ireland, The Chartered Insurance Institute (UK), The Royal College of Surgeons, BFC Bank, Interxion Data Centres, Isle of Man Gold Bullion, Brown Thomas, Bvlgari, Boodles, Druids Glen, The Shelbourne Hotel, and many others ....