Dublin City Council manages approximately 140 ring buoys in Dublin.These ring buoys are located on the banks of the two canals, the three rivers (Liffey, Tolka and Dodder), in the Docklands area and in the Council beach areas. Unfortunately, approximately 15 of these ring buoys go missing/are stolen every week.This problem exists across all 31 local authorities’ areas in Ireland, 18 of which manage coastal water safety and all of which manage inland water safety. Across Ireland, hundreds of life buoys go missing every week, putting people’s lives at risk.
Dublin City Council's Water Safety Officer and Water Safety Ireland are jointly responsible for the monitoring and maintenance of the ring buoys in Dublin City. Inspectors visit each ring buoy location to checking the integrity of each ring buoy. This includes checking the ring buoy itself, its casing and the rope.All issues are manually recorded on a report sheet. The report sheets are brought back to the office, the issue is recorded, reported, and the report sheets are stored.New parts (ring buoys or rope) are ordered and deployed on the next visit to that location.This process can delay the ring buoy replacement turnaround time.Each ring buoy costs approx. €40.The need to replace approximately 600 ring buoys each year costs Dublin City Council in excess of €20,000 and could potentially endanger lives.Due to health and safety issues, ring buoys cannot be re-distributed if they have been tampered with and many end up in landfill sites.d on the feedback from a Prior Information Notice (PIN) published in December 2019, Dublin City Council now wishes to establish a work Agreement.It involves a two-phased approach alongside a PPI process to procure low cost, retro-fit end-to-end, IoT solutions to alert, monitor and report on ring buoy theft (the Services) across multiple site locations in the Dublin region.For further information see attached documentation.Please note that this project is subject to funding.