Home & Home Office Safes

No other facility in a home provides long-term peace of mind quite like a properly certified and installed home safe.

From the most basic of small home safe requirements to protecting fine art objects, high-end jewellery and gold bullion, Certified Safes Ireland™ employ the same expertise and attention to detail to ensure your home safe provides long-term peace of mind. Certified Safes Ireland™ are uniquely qualified to survey your home, find a location that allows for the correct installation of your home safe to European standards, and to integrate your safe seamlessly into your household.

Home surveys are free of charge

Home surveys are free of charge, without obligation and entirely confidential. We have years of experience installing home safes both large and small into houses built in Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian eras, common in Ireland. We are regularly referred by architects, insurers and wealth managers who appreciate the knowledge of structure and diligence required when fitting a home safe into an older and sometimes protected structure.

 Our expertise has been relied on by:

N.A.T.O. Europe, The U.S. Air Force (Europe), PayPal (Worldwide), Grant Thornton, The Department Of Communications (NCSC Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Revenue Commissioners, Electricity Supply Board (Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Danish Defence Forces (Afghanistan), 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 ....

Our seminars on safes, strongrooms and HNW 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).

EU Parliament regulation 765/2008 created the system that provides the legal basis of accreditation for the burglary resistance certification of safes. The ultimate protection against misrepresentation and a legal proof of standard of burglary resistance, accredited European certification is the most important factor in maintaining insurance cover long term, as well as being the basis for all insurance rate recommendations in Europe. If you consider that 70% of safes tested for burglary resistance by accredited European testing labs fail on the first attempt the practical implications of accepting unaccredited claims of burglary resistance are obvious.

These are the logos of the four certification bodies with accreditation to ISO IEC17065 to certify safes to European standards you will most likely encounter on a genuine certification plate in Ireland.

A safe with properly accredited European certification of burglary resistance will display at least one stamped metal certification plate with one of these logos on the inside of the door. This will always be a stamped metal plate, never a sticker.

An accredited certification plate for a safe will display the word "SAFE" , the standard EN1143-1, and the logo of an accredited certification body (not the manufacturer), the burglary resistance grade in Roman numerals, and most importantly, will often provide confirmation that the certification body is accredited to ISO/IEC 17065.

The Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) (UK) The Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) (UK) is a mark commonly encountered in the Irish market. LPCB has issued "certification" plates for safes (European standard EN1143-1) and secure cabinets (European standard EN14450) for many years, despite the fact the body has never been an accredited certification body for the burglary resistance of safes, not even in the UK, according to the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). LPCB "certification" plates are in a similar format to properly accredited European certification, however, an ISO/IEC17065 accreditation which will be present on most accredited certification plates will be absent from an LPCB plate. The fact that LPCB claim to certify their own tests runs counter to any norms in Europe where both the tester and the certifier are legally required to be independent bodies. LPCB certification claims should not be confused with properly accredited European certification, which has a basis in European law as proof of standard, and on which all safe ratings in Europe are based.

 50kN minimum installation

EN1143-1 certification is void for a safe that has not been anchored but some safe installers' idea of what constitutes “anchoring” can differ wildly from others. The benchmark for the correct anchoring of a certified safe is a replication of the laboratory test anchoring force. This means an anchor designed to achieve a holding force of 50kN (5.089 tons) for a safe up to grade III and 100kN (11.24 tons) over that grade, holding forces that rule out removing a safe under most circumstances. 

All certified safes come with a bolt suitable for achieving these anchoring forces, so it is really down to the installer of the safe being familiar with the correct anchoring method. As with certification, always ask for a certificate of anchorage with the anchoring force the installation was designed to achieve indicated on the document. If an installer can not tell you how such anchoring forces are to be achieved this should be a red flag.   

 Choose a safe prepared for alarm

An increasing number of people now choose to link their home safe directly with an intruder alarm system with the use of seismic sensors and to a lesser extent duress being the most popular options. Even if you do not intend to do this straight away, or your insurance company has not requested this integration, it is always a good idea to make sure the home safe and locking device you choose is prepared for intruder alarm, seismic sensor, and duress to future proof your investment. Many rudimentary safes on the market have no such preparation. With the exception of some of our smallest safes, most of our home and business safes come with certified alarm cable tracks and seismic sensor mounting preparation as standard. An alarm cable track can also be quite useful for running watch winder and interior lighting cables.

Safe keys are history

It has always been possible to open a mechanically locked safe by manipulation leaving no trace of entry. Both the knowledge and tools to defeat most mechanical safes locks are now very easily obtained and of course keys for safes are also easily copied, even from a photograph. In comparison, the penalty lockout feature of a certified digital safe lock shuts a safe lock down for ten minutes if four incorrect codes are entered in a row. With the ability to interface with duress and alarm modules, unavailable for a mechanical lock, mechanical access control for a safe has been phased out in most of Europe. The Irish Safes Ratings Group (ISRG) and An Garda Síochána recommend certified digital safe locking over mechanical for security reasons.



Always insist on a digital lock certified to European standard EN1300. If alarm integration is to be used in conjunction with the safe lock, all alarm integration components need to be certified to the European alarm standard EN50131 as alarm signalling devices, in order to elicit a police response.

We understand the need for confidentiality

As Government and NATO contractors Certified Safes Ireland™ understand the need for confidentiality and will always respect yours. We guarantee the confidentiality of all of our private clients. Any photos taken for survey purposes have location data removed and are erased directly after use unless directed otherwise by the client. All booking records and client information pertaining to completed work is anonymised across all of our systems at the end of each month in compliance with the G.D.P.R

 For Advice Call: +353 1 7076011

Certified Safes Ireland™ director Alan Donohoe Redd is a member of the European CEN263 Working Group responsible for writing European Standards for safes, strongrooms (vaults), secure cabinets and physical data protection for the European Union. 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 and 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.

Alan is an expert on standards and fraud issues related to secure storage in Europe and the UK, 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, including some published by the Irish Times, and has been pivotal in having misleading standards and practices recognised and withdrawn in Ireland, the UK and at a European level.