Clutches for the Sale of Alcohol in Supermarket; New regulation will take effect from Thursday

A new regulation has been brought in by the authorities to control or enclose alcohol products from supermarkets.

The new regulation has come into effect from Thursday and this might bring in a lot of changes to the Irish consumers.

The legislation was passed under Section 22 of the Public Health Alcohol Act way back in 2018, in a proposal to tackle excessive alcohol consumption in the state.

The new law aims to reduce the appeal of alcohol products to the youth and children by removing them from supermarkets and similar stores.

The head of communications and advocacy at lobby group Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI), Eunan McKinney said that they are extremely happy with the new regulation.

‘These measures provide us all with a new opportunity to end the normalisation of alcohol throughout society. Alcohol is not an ordinary product and should never be seen as such.’ He said.

‘The significance of placing alcohol controls on a statutory basis, ending a somewhat cavalier self-regulatory approach, is highly important.’ He added.

Mr McKinney also said that The Public Health Alcohol Act holds this principle at the heart of its effort and look forward to the Government fulfilling its promise, outlined in the Programme for Government, to implement, in full, the Public Health Alcohol Act (PHAA) to upright their longstanding pledge to introducing minimum unit pricing.

With the new regulation, mixed retail outlets will now on limit the display of alcohol products to a separate area divided by physical barriers no less than 1.2-meter-high, which blocks the display of the advertisements or the product themselves.

Otherwise the shops can install a bounded storage unit adjacently on the shop floor, which forbids the vision pf alcohol products up to a minimum height of 1.5 meters.

As a last option, the regulation allows shops to setup a maximum of three adjacent units one metre in width and 2.2 metres in height. The new rule will be supervised by the HSE Environmental Health Officers.