Criticism of trend of vape and phone shops on prime Cork city streets

There are 35 vape and phone shops in Cork city centre, dereliction campaigners have said.

In response to criticisms of the trend, Cork City Council said current legislation does not allow it to distinguish between these stores and other retail outlets during the planning process.

Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry, of anti-dereliction lobby group Derelict Ireland, said they have been advocating to shine a light on the scale of vacancy and dereliction in Cork city, and have seen more and more buildings coming back to life as homes and businesses.

“However,” they added, “there has been a worrying trend in recent years of a proliferation of vape and phone shops in what were, in some cases, vacant or derelict buildings.”

This is particularly evident in Cork city centre, where they say they counted 35 of these stores, 23 of which promote vaping on the shop front.

They said: “That’s a lot of vaping and phone repairing within a 1km city centre radius.

“In a time where cigarettes are deemed societally unacceptable due to health concerns, it seems strange to be so aggressively promoting and enabling an equivalent unhealthy activity, while many of the shop fronts would also seem to be flaunting council policy.”

The council’s shop-front policy states: “Ground-floor shop fronts shall be consistent with the fenestration details and architectural and streetscape character of the remainder of the structure or of neighbouring structures.”

Mr O’Connor and Ms Sherry added: “There are other concerns too, such as the recent fire in Glasgow’s iconic 1851 train station where the fire started in a vape shop. Vapes that contain batteries are dangerous at every stage of their single linear life cycle, from mining to vaping and disposal. 

"This raises questions... what kind of urban centres do we want?”

A motion at the most recent meeting of Cork City Council by Green Party councillor Oliver Moran proposed it should be an objective of the council for 33% of commercial units on Patrick Street to be occupied by local and slow or circular-economy businesses.

Niall Ó Donnabháin, the council’s director of planning and integrated development, said “planning legislation and guidance does not currently differentiate” between different types of stores.

Phone and vape stores were raised during discussion of the motion, and Mr Ó Donnabháin said: “This is an issue with legislation — we don’t have the remit to control it.

“A vape shop, despite people’s perception, is still a shop.”

If a clothing store shuts down and the new owners seek to open a vape shop there, this does not require change-of-use planning permission, like changing it to a restaurant, bar, office, or betting shop would.

He added that the council was looking into places that could be defined as an architectural conservation area, where specific types of use for buildings in those areas would be set out that could prohibit vape shops “where people have concern the nature and character of the area would change negatively”.

However, he said “we don’t want to put overly restrictive policies in place” that would prevent businesses from bringing vacant commercial units into use.

Labour councillor Peter Horgan previously said the council should not be allowing “garish” vape shop fronts.