Residents are mobilising against what they see as the steady encroachment of sex shops into residential areas - but the shops are uniting to hit back, writes Carl O'Brien
It's a quiet weekday afternoon in the Miss Euro sex shop, in the shadow of St Peter's Church in Phibsborough. The only customer, a middle-aged man, is flicking through copies of Over 40s, an adult magazine featuring mature women. In another corner there's an impressive array of multi-coloured dildos, kept carefully behind a glass case. And in the middle of the shop there are rows of DVDs and videos featuring everything from gay to lesbian to amateur porn.
"Things are fairly slow here at the moment," admits 24-year-old John Nolan, the owner, who's watching TV to pass the time. "Christmas is the busiest time. People are looking for toys, presents or just something to spice things up in the bedroom. Right now we're just ticking over."
It's a good business to be in, he says. It makes a pleasant change from working as a labourer on the building sites. The hours are better, the money is good and it doesn't exhaust him. In fact, it's been so successful that his sister has just set up a shop in Longford. A few of his friends have also started up shops in Dublin and other parts of the country.
"I'm making a decent living, but not a fortune," he says. "Like anyone else I'm trying to pay my mortgage and help raise a family. To me it's just a normal business." But many people in Phibsborough, and other communities across Dublin, take another view. Residents' groups and politicians are beginning to mobilise against what they see as the steady encroachment of sex shops and adult entertainment into residential areas.
Mostly they're angry at sex shops opening near schools, potentially damaging young people's attitudes towards sex and lowering the tone of neighbourhoods. But the biggest issue among those campaigning against them is that they're powerless to stop them.
Under Irish planning laws, sex shops are regarded as any other retail unit such as a Spar or Centra. Furthermore, no planning permission is required to change an ordinary shop into a sex shop.
Laws regarding the opening of lap-dancing or strip clubs are relatively lax, too. They only require a bar and dance licence, as the sector is not subject to any other form of regulation.
Dublin now has about 20 sex shops, mostly in the city centre, while a dozen more are scattered across Cork, Galway, Waterford, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tralee, Drogheda and Longford.
This lack of regulation is in stark contrast with the UK, where the opening of sex shops is tightly controlled and shops must abide by a range of conditions relating to their location, opening hours and appearance.
"We're getting a lot of complaints from locals around the constituency," says Joe Costello TD, who has seen a number of sex shops sprout up across north Dublin in recent times. "This isn't a moral argument against them. No one is saying we should ban them. But we do need to regulate them. The shop in Phibsborough is close to a residential area, it's opposite a place of devotion. Overall, it's highly inappropriate."
THIS WEEK, A Dublin City Council policing body called on the Government to introduce legislation requiring specific planning permission for sex shops, lap-dancing clubs and other adult-entertainment outlets to limit their growth in the city. Meanwhile, Minister for the Environment John Gormley is overseeing the establishment of a task force, featuring representatives of Government departments, which will draw up recommendations regarding the regulation of adult-entertainment venues. Its report is due later this year.
In the absence of any immediate change in the law, the only option available to local authorities is to amend development plans and ban the location of sex shops in particular areas, although this is considered by many to be a lengthy and unwieldy process.
Sex shops, however, are beginning to fight back. They have formed their own representative group - the Irish Adult Shops Association - and say they are being unfairly scapegoated for the failure of authorities to regulate the sector.
"The area isn't regulated, so we're trying to self-regulate it," says the group's spokesman, Dave Andrews, who runs Laura Jane, an adult shop on Dublin's Upper Clanbrassil Street. "We had an issue with a shop in Galway, for example, and I dealt personally with the council and helped get the shop relocated."
He says membership of the association is limited to responsible sex-shop owners who aren't interested in setting up shops in areas where they shouldn't be. "I don't think there should be shops in residential areas. That's not where we belong. But we don't belong down back lanes either. We're retailers, we pay our tax, we've nothing to hide. We don't want to drive the business underground."
Business these days is relatively good, he says. The smoking ban has helped, with more people deciding to take an adult DVD home with them in the evenings. More women are also beginning to shop in adult stores.
Shops either sell DVDs - ranging in price from €20 to €50 - or buy them back second hand at a discounted price. Magazines cost anything between €3 and €10.
"We're dependant on disposable income, like many businesses," says Andrews. "When the economy is doing well it means people have more money in their pocket." Most shop owners run a single shop, but a few are beginning to expand their businesses, with chains such as Shauna's and Utopia popping up in different parts of the country. Andrews, a former supermarket manager, says most sex shops buy their products from reputable distributors in Holland and Germany. He insists the business has no links with the illegal underbelly of the sex industry such as prostitution, human trafficking and exploitation.
Despite the sex shops' insistence that they are responsible retailers, they are breaking the law in a very obvious way: all the pornographic DVDs they sell are illegal.
Under the Video Recordings Act 1989, it is an offence to sell films that are not rated first by the Irish Film Censor's Office. However, the movies themselves are too extreme to carry an 18 certificate, while the censor does not have any other restricted-viewing rating available. As a result, sex shops are often subject to Garda raids or Customs seizures. Last year, the censor's office was involved in more than 50 court cases relating to illegal material on sale, while officials in the Revenue Commissioners seized more than 1,500 DVDs. "This isn't innocuous, softcore porn," says the film censor, John Kelleher. "This is much tougher stuff. We're not talking about raunchy sex - it can be specialist fetish stuff."
But the Irish Adult Shops Association says that it wants the films to be censored, and it has been granted leave by the courts to secure a judicial review on the right of the censors and the Censorship of Films Appeals Board not to licence pornographic movies. It means that a fascinating legal battle, in which issues of freedom of expression and censorship collide, is due to be aired in the rarefied confines of the High Court later this year.
"The irony is that I'm a businessman when I travel to the Netherlands to buy this material, yet I'm a criminal when I arrive into Ireland. It doesn't make sense," says Andrews.
A MUCH MORE local battle, meanwhile, is brewing in Phibsborough. Cllr Emer Costello - Joe Costello's wife - is fighting alongside local residents to stop another sex shop opening in the constituency. "We need the Government to act quickly," she says. "Places like Capel Street have been destroyed with the number of sex shops. We need to control the numbers. Also, residential areas like this are no places for these shops."
Religious groups, too, are campaigning against the shops. Several evenings a week a small group gathers outside Miss Euro to say the rosary and hand out Miraculous Medals. On Wednesday evening this week, two men turned up to pray. Few people in the rush-hour traffic or on the busy footpath noticed the men, who stood with their heads bowed, quietly reciting the rosary.
"We hope he'll realise the damage that is being done," says David, in his 40s, when he has finished praying. "It's ruining marriages. Isn't it? And it's giving children a terrible sense of what's right and wrong. It's not right."
"We used to protest every night against Stringfellows as well, and that closed after a few months," adds Liam, who is in his mid-70s, and works as a volunteer in a hostel for homeless men. "We'll keep coming here until it closes too."
The shop owner, however, is unconcerned. Nolan says he has a good relationship with the community, but understands that some people might have a problem with his shop.
"A lot of people say 'fair play' for doing something different. Other older people were brought up with the church, but times have changed. No disrespect to them, but they're stuck in the past. At the end of the day, no one is being forced to come in here. And if they don't want to come in, they don't have to."
Red-light green light? Sex shops abroad
BRITAIN:Regulation is the responsibility of local councils. For example, Reading County Council has sweeping powers to refuse an applicant seeking a licence to open a sex shop. Under its "sex establishment policy", the council can only grant a licence for a sex shop in a predominantly commercial area.
It must also take into account the proximity of a shop to residential areas, places of worship, schools, areas with the highest levels of recorded crime, and other sex shops. Opening hours are restricted to between 9am and 7pm from Mondays to Saturdays, and shops must close on Sundays. Any applicant for a licence must publish an advertisement in the local newspaper and display a public notice at the intended premises for 21 days from the time that a licence application has been submitted.
BELGIUM:Each local authority develops its own rules regarding the licensing of sex shops, and in practice they favour clustering these establishments in zones. In Brussels there are nine registered sex shops in two zones, one near the Brussels North railway station and another in the city centre. Prospective shop-owners must apply for a permit, which the city considers with regard to the proximity of children and other residents.
"Owners also pay a higher tax than normal, which is intended to reduce the number of sex shops," says Brussels public relations spokesman Perrine Marchal, who says that local residents always get the opportunity to comment on every application.
THE NETHERLANDS:The vast majority of Amsterdam's sex shops and brothels are in the De Wallen area (left), the most notorious red-light district in Europe and perhaps the world. "There are no schools in this area, but if a sex-related firm wanted to set up near a school, for example, the government would be very careful," says Bart Bakker, Amsterdam city spokesman.
THE US:Many American cities restrict the location of sex shops and brothels. For example, the city of Maitland, in Florida, bans shops from being located within 150m of entrances to houses in residential zones. They must also be more than 150m from churches, childcare centres, community facilities, schools, hospitals and any other places where children are likely to congregate.
Jamie Smyth