Shoplifting may be costing Irish businesses as much as €300 million a year, and many senior security personnel believe that up to one-third is due to "staff dishonesty", a conference heard in Galway yesterday .
Open-shelf trading, large numbers of customers, massive and speedy turnovers of stock and frequent changes in staff all contribute to losses which are far higher than those of any other industry, Mr Tony Keane, managing director of Keane Security and Fire Safety Ltd, told a retailer conference hosted by Londis Topshop.
Stealing has been "made too easy", he said, with schoolchildren regarding it as a sport and organised gangs making "a good living out of it", he said.
Firms that did not take steps to stop the "drain of theft" would have their profitability eroded in a competitive environment, where they could not afford to compensate by price increases.
As part of security measures, a search clause should be included in staff conditions of employment in retail outlets, Mr Keane suggested.
In the absence of trained security staff, those empowered to do the searching must be clearly spelled out to employees, he said. Spot checks should be intermittent but "sufficiently frequent to make staff feel that they are likely to be searched at any time".
Malpractice at cash register points was a "major risk" and checking by test purchasing was best left to an outside agency.
The double-sided "amount payable" window on the modern cash register makes it difficult for an operator to gain advantage by "under-ringing" and verbally asking for more than the amount shown on the indicator.
Also speaking at the conference, former Fine Gael leader Mr Alan Dukes expressed concern about the emergence of a relatively small number of large retail operators with considerable market power.
He said that there was a solid case for regulation of the numbers, location and the pricing policies of retail giants as their unlimited development would inevitably reduce the numbers of smaller and more "local" shops.
