Case Studies

Dundrum at ST17 Dublin

by Mark Rowe

What differences in data protection between the Republic of Ireland and the UK mean for security management was set out by one speaker at the ST17 Dublin conference.

He was Pat Neill, the former Dublin Garda inspector, who has been head of security at Dundrum Town Centre, the retail centre south of the city, for 12 years. Irish law takes a narrower view of data protection than the UK’s Data Protection Act. UK shops can swap images of suspects; while in the Republic the consultant and long-time security man Donie O’Callaghan has tried in vain to make a southern Irish equivalent to the UK’s Retailers Against Crime (RAC). The new GDPR (general data protection regulation) will, being from the European Union, apply to the UK and Ireland alike from next year.

Pat, pictured, said that fire controls are much tighter than ‘across the water’. Why should UK readers care? Because, as Pat said, he deals with English retailers all the time, that have branches in Dundrum, and don’t understand their Irish fire safety responsibilities. It means that control room operators have to know where fire sprinklers are fitted and how to switch them off.

Pat set out how important CCTV is to what he does operationally. Court awards for a ‘slip, trip and fall’ are far higher in the Republic than the UK; and Dundrum is the largest shopping centre in Ireland, that sees 4.5m car parkings each year. “But we have never had one car stolen yet, and that is because there is a sense that the whole place is covered by CCTV cameras.”

More in the May and June 2017 print issues of Professional Security magazine.

For a gallery of photos from the Security TWENTY conference, and exhibition alongside, at the Red Cow Moran Hotel on Wednesday, April 4, visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/gallery/st17-ireland-in-dublin/. The regular informal networking dinner at the hotel the night before the event proper raised 2600 euros for an Irish charity, the LauraLynn children’s hospice.

The next ST17 event is at Harrogate, a new venue in the series, on Tuesday, July 4. For 2017 venues and dates, visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/security-twenty-home/.

St events are free to attend; register at https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-twenty17-register/.

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