It’s been a far-from-peaceful time for Christopher Wisniewski.
The alarm in a Hawkins Street building started to go off at about 3 pm last Friday week, he said. On the Monday after, it was still going. “The last week was horrible, it was going off the whole day,” Wisniewski said.
Wisniewski, who works in the printing company PrintSave in a corner building near Burgh Quay, said it made business that bit harder to have the nearby building’s alarm incessantly sounding. But it wasn’t really clear what they could do.
What to Do
Fine Gael Councillor Naoise O’Muirí, who is the head of the city council’s Environment Strategic Policy Committee, said he wouldn’t single alarms out as a major issue of concern. But he did say that many people might not know alarms have anything to do with local authorities.
“I think you’d be surprised if you asked the public about this, most people wouldn’t know that DCC have any role to play in enforcing this,” he said.
There are indeed laws and regulations around the sounding of home alarms.
Under a set of standards adopted in 2006, they shouldn’t sound for more than 15 minutes before switching off. If you’re away and can’t get into the property, you should have a nominated key holder who can get to the alarm within 90 minutes of it being triggered.
Of the €867,426 that the council spent last year enforcing different pollution regulations, approximately €193,000 went on noise complaints, according to a spokesperson from Dublin City Council Press Office. Of 470 noise complaints, 44 of them, or 9.4 percent, were in relation to alarms.
See more at https://www.dublininquirer.com/2016/08/10/inner-city-wailing-burglar-alarms-add-din/
