From 28 September 2026, the statutory minimum hourly rate for workers covered by the Security Industry Employment Regulation Order is due to increase from €15.41 to €16.15, following the announcement by Minister of State for Employment, Small Business and Retail Alan Dillon TD. The increase of 74 cent per hour represents a rise of approximately 4.8 per cent in the statutory minimum rate and follows the previous increase from €14.50 to €15.41 in July 2025. Taken together, the minimum hourly rate will have risen by more than 11 per cent since July 2024.

For the event industry, this should not be viewed simply as an employment-law development affecting security contractors. Security is a significant and sometimes substantial component of event delivery costs, particularly for festivals, concerts, sporting events and other large public gatherings, and the new rate will inevitably feed into the cost of providing those services. The appropriate response is not to question the need for properly paid and professional security personnel. The more important issue for organisers is whether event budgets, procurement arrangements and staffing plans are being updated quickly enough to reflect the real cost of delivering the required security operation.

Security has become an increasingly professionalised part of event delivery

In announcing the new Employment Regulation Order, Minister Dillon specifically recognised the increasing professionalism and responsibility associated with security work and the role security personnel play in protecting people and property across areas including entertainment. That professionalisation is particularly evident within event security, where licensing by the Private Security Authority now applies to personnel carrying out security functions at events. Event security contractors themselves must hold the appropriate PSA contractor licence, while individuals carrying out security work must hold the relevant employee licence or, where applicable, a Temporary Licence for Event Security.

The distinction between licensed event security personnel and event stewards is especially important because, although both may work alongside each other within an event operation, their roles are not interchangeable. The PSA defines event stewards as personnel carrying out non-security functions such as checking tickets, directing patrons, providing safety information, observing crowd dynamics and assisting with traffic management. Stewards may not carry out security activities such as preventing unauthorised entry, removing people from a venue, searching patrons or protecting people or property.

As security labour costs increase, organisers therefore need to be particularly careful that cost pressures do not lead inadvertently to security responsibilities being transferred to personnel who are neither licensed nor permitted to perform them.

The headline hourly rate is only part of the cost

The new €16.15 rate is the statutory minimum hourly rate for an adult worker covered by the Security Industry Employment Regulation Order, but organisers should avoid treating that figure as the complete cost of purchasing event security. The existing Employment Regulation Order contains a wider package of employment conditions, including an unsocial-hours premium of €20 per shift from 1 January 2026 where the relevant conditions are met. It also provides that where a security guard is scheduled or called in for a duty of less than four hours, a minimum of four hours’ pay applies.

Security contractors must also meet their wider employment costs, including employer payroll costs, supervision, training, management, insurance, licensing, administration, equipment and operational overheads. A 74 cent increase in the statutory hourly wage should therefore not be assumed to translate into an identical 74 cent increase in the hourly contract rate charged to an organiser. For an event using 100 security personnel for ten hours, the wage-rate increase alone represents an additional €740 in basic pay before any other employer costs or contractor overheads are considered. For an operation involving 250 personnel over a 12-hour period, the increase in basic pay alone would amount to approximately €2,220.

Those figures are not intended as estimates of what a contractor should charge, but they illustrate how what appears to be a relatively modest hourly change can become material once applied across a large event workforce.

Security numbers cannot simply be reduced to absorb the increase

This is where the issue becomes particularly relevant to event governance.  The PSA’s event security standard establishes baseline staffing assumptions of one event security person for every 250 people in permanent seats, stands or terraces, and one for every 100 people in other areas. The required security operation must also reflect the event risk assessment and Event Security Management Plan and should be determined in consultation with the relevant local authority and An Garda Síochána.

Where security numbers fall below those baseline ratios, the PSA requires the reduction to be supported by a risk assessment identifying the rationale and the mitigating factors relied upon. Importantly, event stewards cannot simply be used to make up the number of event security personnel required under the PSA standard. This means that an organiser faced with a higher security quotation cannot safely treat the staffing level as an ordinary procurement variable that can automatically be reduced until the budget balances.

Security numbers should follow the risk profile and operational requirements of the event, rather than the other way around. There may be legitimate opportunities to improve deployment through better site design, access control, ticketing arrangements, crowd routing, barriers, accreditation systems, technology or changes to the operating plan, but any reduction in security resources should arise from a defensible assessment of risk rather than a financial target imposed after the event budget has already been fixed.

What should organisers do now?

For events taking place from late September onwards, organisers should establish whether existing security quotations and contracts already account for the new statutory rate or whether a price adjustment is likely before delivery.

For organisers currently preparing 2027 budgets, the change should already be built into financial planning rather than treated as an unexpected supplier increase when security contracts are eventually placed.

Rising labour costs have wider consequences for event viability

The security pay increase also highlights a broader issue facing the event industry, because many of the costs involved in delivering events are moving independently of ticket prices, grant levels or available event budgets. Security is not an optional enhancement that can simply be removed when costs rise. Neither are medical provision, insurance, temporary infrastructure, traffic management, licensing requirements or many of the other services required to deliver a safe event.

When statutory or regulatory requirements increase the cost of essential event services, those increases ultimately have to be absorbed somewhere, whether by the organiser, the public funder, the sponsor or the audience through the ticket price. That does not provide an argument against improving employment conditions. It does provide a strong argument for recognising the real cost of compliant event delivery when public bodies, local authorities, funders and policymakers consider the financial environment in which events are being produced. If the State expects increasingly professional standards across security, safety, employment, accessibility and event management, the economic models used to fund and assess events must be capable of recognising those standards as part of the cost of doing business.

Paying properly for security and maintaining safety should not be competing objectives

A professional security workforce is fundamental to the safe operation of many events, and the statutory wage increase recognises the level of responsibility carried by people working in that environment.  For organisers, however, recognising that value must be accompanied by realistic financial planning.

The wrong response to increasing security costs would be to blur the distinction between security and stewarding, reduce numbers without an evidence-based assessment, or treat essential safety resources as the first place to find savings when an event budget becomes difficult.  The better response is to understand the regulatory framework, establish the security requirement early, procure appropriately and ensure that the cost is reflected honestly within the event’s financial model.

As labour costs continue to rise, the relationship between event affordability, professional standards and regulatory expectations deserves greater attention across the wider policy conversation about Ireland’s event industry.  A sustainable event industry requires people to be paid appropriately for skilled and responsible work, but it also requires organisers to have viable financial models through which those standards can actually be delivered.

The new security rate is therefore more than a payroll change. It is another reminder that the true cost of delivering safe, professionally managed events needs to be understood and planned for from the beginning.

This article is intended as general information for the event industry and does not constitute employment, legal or financial advice.