Time for new planning controls on vape shops, council says

Dublin city councillors are being urged to back calls for new planning controls on vape shops which would give local authorities greater powers to restrict their numbers and prevent clusters of outlets developing in urban centres.

Louth County Council passed a motion seeking the new powers earlier this year.

That's been shared with Dublin city councillors, in the hope they will join a wider push for local authorities to pressure the government to change national planning regulations.

Darragh Moriarty, a Labour party councillor for the south-west inner-city, said he agrees that something needs to be done, urgently.

He was recently frustrated to find a new shop had opened in Inchicore, near Inchicore National School and Grattan Crescent Playground.

“It has all of these kind of colourful, shiny marketing materials in the window, and very much, you know, ‘Come in here, teenagers,’” he says.

He consulted with the HSE’s Environmental Health office, given the proximity to the school and playground, to see if there was anything that it could do to intervene.

Alas, he says, the HSE told him that, as there was no legislation the shop was falling foul of, there was nothing that could be done.

A study published in The Lancet last year found that in 2015, people aged 15–24 had the lowest odds of e-cigarette use, but by 2023, they had the highest.

The call from Louth councillors to their contemporaries across Ireland has taken on added significance following comments by Taoiseach Micheál Martin this week that greater controls are needed on the proliferation of such shops.

Speaking at the Fianna Fáil think-in in Tullamore, Martin said members of the parliamentary party had raised concerns about the number of outlets appearing in towns and on individual streets.

“A number of deputies said in some streets and towns around Ireland you have a proliferation of them,” he said, adding that “there needs to be some control of that.”

Martin's intervention came as two separate pieces of legislation aimed at tightening regulation of vaping products and how they are advertised at the point of purchase are progressing through the Oireachtas.

However, neither addresses the planning status of vape shops or defines what precisely constitutes a “vape shop” for planning purposes.

In fact, while the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) (Amendment) Bill 2026 proposes restrictions on the packaging and appearance of vaping products and how they are advertised and displayed, specialised vape shops are not covered.

“This section shall not apply to a premises or a website (or otherwise online) which wholly comprises the sale of nicotine inhaling products or mainly comprises the sale of nicotine inhaling products,” the bill states.

Louth tries to rally the troops nationwide

The planning issue was formally raised by independent Councillor Ciarán Fisher at the March meeting of Louth County Council, where he proposed changes to the Planning and Development Regulations.

His motion expressed concern about the “ongoing proliferation of vape shops in our town centres”, reducing economic diversity and contributing to a decline in the “vitality, pull, and dwell factors of our streetscapes".

It also highlighted public health concerns, particularly the exposure of young people to vaping products in shops close to schools and residential areas.

These retailers should be treated more akin to bookies and off-licences, the motion says.

At the heart of the issue is that vape shops do not have their own distinct planning use-class and are instead treated as "general retail use".

Fisher's motion therefore called for a distinct use class for vape shops and comparable premises, with a change to such a business treated as a material change of use, requiring full planning permission.

It also sought explicit powers allowing councils to refuse applications where another vape shop would result in an over-concentration of such businesses, taking account of density, location, public health impacts and “the need to maintain a balanced retail mix”.

Fisher’s motion also called for it to be circulated to other local authorities, “for their consideration and support”.

But what exactly is a vape shop?

Any move to create a new planning category, however, raises another potentially difficult question: what legally constitutes a “vape shop”?

There is currently no specific definition of a vape shop in the national planning regulations.

That matters because vaping products are not sold exclusively by specialist vaping retailers.

Convenience stores, newsagents, sweet shops, phone and accessory shops and other retailers can sell vaping products alongside a much wider range of goods.

Some businesses may predominantly sell vapes and e-liquids, while for others they represent only a small part of their overall stock.

“Is 51 percent of the sales vapes and therefore they’re considered a specialist? I don't know, and I think there's a bit of ambiguity there around defining that,” says Moriarty. “There's a kind of mishmash of things that these shops are selling to make them attractive to a certain cohort of the public.”

A new Cochrane report published last month found that vaping offers smokers a better chance at quitting than any other replacements, like nicotine gum or patches.

But the big issue is around vapes as a gateway to smoking. Kids who vape are more likely to smoke cigarettes in the future.

Moriarty says he doesn’t think a person who's “embarking on a smoking cessation journey”, and wants to use vaping to get off cigarettes, is necessarily going to be the target market for those types of shops.

Even as more legislation looms, the rise of “candy and vape” shops continues

Is it okay to sell the two together?

Dublin InQuirerLois Kapila

The Louth motion calls for a distinct category for “vape shops and comparable premises” but does not set out a detailed threshold defining when a retailer would fall into that category.

Sex shops 2.0

Dublin has a history of attempting to distinguish particular forms of retail activity for planning purposes, says Councillor Dermot Lacey, a member of the city council’s Planning and Urban Regeneration Strategic Policy Committee, and a Labour Party colleague of Moriarty's.

More than two decades ago, concern focused on adult and sex shops, Lacey says.

Where’s a Good Place for a Sex Shop? - Dublin Inquirer

Politicians who successfully opposed the opening of a sex shop in Drumcondra say they want to ensure that adult stores aren’t build anywhere near schools or playgrounds. Would that effectively ban them from the city?

Dublin InQuirerLois Kapila

Dublin's 2005–2011 Development Plan contained a policy seeking to prohibit adult shops close to residential areas.

The issue highlighted a problem similar to that now facing vape shops – sex shops were generally treated as ordinary retail premises under planning rules, meaning an existing shop could become a sex shop without necessarily requiring fresh planning permission.

Dublin councillors subsequently called for national legislation to close what was described at the time as a planning loophole, says Lacey.

Dublin's approach to adult shops has since become more developed.

The current Dublin's 2022–2028 Development Plan expressly defines “adult shops” as including uses such as sex shops and head shops.

Under Policy CCUV14, there is a “presumption against adult shops, betting shops and gaming arcades in proximity to residential areas, places of public worship and schools and similarly, there will be a presumption against an excessive concentration of such uses having regard to the existing presence of such retail outlets in an area”.

Separately, the Development Standards chapter states it is an aim of the council to “prevent an over concentration of betting offices / adult stores in the city, thereby, ensuring the number of units in a city street, district or neighbourhood centre is not disproportionate to the overall number of community facilities and shop units”.

That provides a potential precedent for Dublin developing a policy towards vape retailers.

But the experience also highlights the distinction between having a Development Plan policy restricting a particular type of business, and having national regulations which require that business to obtain planning permission in the first place.

“I think it puts an enormous burden on the local authorities to try and work out something that is, you know, within the law, within the constitution, and so forth,” says Lacey.

“And I think it would be far better if the government brought in legislation defining what a vape shop was and then allowed local authorities to restrict them to certain areas or restrict a number of them," he says.

“That, to me, would be the way to deal with it, rather than trying to ask each local authority to have, you know their own definitions and so forth,” he says.

South Dublin County Council (SDCC) highlighted the problem last year when then-Sinn Féin Councillor Niamh Fennell sought restrictions on vape shops close to schools.

Council planners there warned that even introducing a vape-shop policy into the Development Plan would have “very limited effect on the ground” because existing planning exemptions allow numerous commercial and retail premises to become shops, including vape shops, without requiring planning permission.

The council concluded that the current planning system was “unsuited to the management of vape shops”.

The Louth proposal, now shared with Dublin city councillors and councils across Ireland, is intended to close that gap by changing national regulations and giving local authorities greater control.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.