Call to ban sex shops within 3km of schools
A motion to ban sex shops within 3km of primary schools is "ridiculous", the owner of an adult store that had to close its doors last month has said.
Protests from the local community outside the Play Blue adult shop, across the road from a primary school on Richmond Road, Drumcondra, led owners Robert Doyle and Richie Cullen to vacate the premises before its official opening.
In the wake of that decision, Dublin city councillor Ciaran O'Moore has put forward a motion to prevent any similar shop opening within a 3km radius of a primary school.
"Let me make this clear, I'm not against sex shops," Mr O'Moore told the Herald.
"However, I do have a problem with some of the people that hang around them.
"I don't think these shops should be located anywhere near where children are.
"They should be pushed out to industrial estates, away from the city centre."
Mr Doyle, who already owns a store in Kilkenny, said a ruling such as this would ruin business.
"It's absolutely incredible. There'd be nowhere in Dublin, there'd be nowhere in Meath almost, unless you went somewhere very, very rural. Not even a village," he said.
"That's obviously a motion to try and ban sex shops and it's just grandstanding, really.
"I don't honestly believe that any right-minded person thinks something like this would make any sense at all.
"I assume logic will hold through in the end, so I'm not particularly threatened about it, to be honest."
Mr Doyle hopes to open up to five more shops across the country over the next 12 months.
"Nobody has come up with a concrete reason as to why sex shops are bad. They do no harm to anyone," he said.
"We actually regulate the access to porn in the way mobile phones don't.
"We stringently enforce the rule that nobody under the age of 18 can get into our shop."
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