The following information is from the website of Certified Safes Ireland, who claim that current An Garda Síochána gun safe recommendations are outdated and out of line with EU standards.
Certified Safes Ireland say that “when Minister of State James Browne’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in their reports, is the core reason Ireland’s firearms regulations are so out of line with European norms and woefully outdated.
Statutory Instrument No: 307 relies on British Standard 7558 “Specification for gun cabinets”, an extremely outdated standard from 1992.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The reliance on this outdated British Standard for the secure storage of firearms instead of European burglary resistance standards like EN1143-1 (the safe standard) or EN14450 (the secure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”.
(end of quote from Certified Safes Ireland)
Link to Certified Safes Ireland website HERE
