Small business estimates that crime is costing the sector £90 million (€114 million) a year in Ireland. Of this, the bill for shoplifting and theft amounts to £60 million.

Not surprisingly, this cost ultimately gets passed on to the consumer and Mr Pat Delaney of the Small Firms Association puts the additional cost in the prices shoppers pay at 3 per cent.

Burglary is one of the biggest contributors to business losses, accounting for 22 per cent. Theft of stock (22 per cent), cash (19 per cent) and property (12 per cent) are the other major losses, with criminal damage accounting for 13 per cent. Direct losses from robbery are 3 per cent, with credit and cheque card fraud costing business 7 per cent of total crime losses.

Thirty-five per cent of small businesses said they had been targets of crime, in the SFA's 1999 national crime survey. With the number of businesses reporting repeat incidences of crime rising from 5 per cent in 1997 to 25 per cent in 1999, it is not surprising that the investment in security has risen.

The single largest investment is in alarm equipment, but the use of closed circuit television has risen dramatically. In 1997, only 7 per cent of businesses surveyed said they used such technology. By 1999, the number had risen to 41 per cent.

Other forms of security have shown even more dramatic rises. The number of firms using till surveillance has gone from zero to 6 per cent, while those turning to hidden cameras was 13 per cent, up from only 3 per cent two years earlier.

The use of access controls - swipe cards, keypads and intercoms - has risen from zero to 36 per cent of small business.

Although the level of crime has declined 6 per cent in the two-year period with the increase in security, the incidence of violent crime has risen fourfold. As a result, the use of surveillance looks set to continue, despite some reservations over how it is used.