DUBLIN FIRE BRIGADE has advised charity shop owners to consider putting designated pick up points away from their shops when they are closed after donated clothes were set on fire this morning.

DFB tweeted that firefighters from Phibsborough Fire Station attended a fire at a charity shop this morning.

Clothes that had been left outside the store had been set alight, activating a fire alarm in the store itself and nearby flats.

“Manage a charity shop? Consider a pick up point away from your shop when it’s closed,” DFB tweeted. 

Last year, a number of charities advised people to drop off donations at their shops only during working hours, after an increase in people leaving bags of clothing and other items outside shops.   

Charities voiced concerns after a number of reports that contents often end up being taken or thrown out onto the footpath or street outside the shop.

“Donations left outside charity shops can cause great difficulty and expense for the organisation. Such donations are likely to be damaged or destroyed by the weather and the charity has to bear the cost of its removal,” a spokesperson for the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) said at the time.

The spokesperson said these donations are also “prone to theft” or to being “deliberately destroyed”.

If donations are left in a black bag in a public area there is every possibility that the shop could be prosecuted for littering the area.

“The only way to ensure that a donation is used effectively by a charity is to bring the donation into the shop during normal opening hours,” the spokesperson told TheJournal.ie.