UK Sex Shop News

A Belfast businessman is planning a fresh bid to open the city's first legal sex shop - in the Boucher Road area.

Brian Hope has withdrawn his application with Belfast City Council for an outlet at Gresham Street in the city centre. Now it can be revealed he has been viewing alternative locations around Boucher Road.

There has only been one licence granted for a sex shop in Northern Ireland. That was given by Newtownabbey Borough Council in 2007 for premises in Central Park industrial estate in Mallusk.

A vote by the council in November to stand by its morality decision of 2003 and not allow any licensed sex shops on Gresham Street resulted in a withdrawal of the licence application.

However, an official advised the committee that Hope was likely to apply again in the new year for a different location and was viewing premises at Boucher Road, amongst others.

Hope said that he had financial backers in England that would allow him to open a three-storey business and employ five staff.

When plans for an Ann Summers shop on O'Connell Street first came to light, chief executive Jacqueline Gold got a bullet in the post. How times have changed

It's been 15 years since the Ann Summers pleasure emporium opened its doors in Dublin. Has the peddling of chocolate willies, vibrators, lingerie and lubes done any damage to the nation's place in the hearts or the minds of its people or its visitors? Has the sky fallen in? The tourists still come, it seems. Irish people still go about their business. Sex still happens. Or it doesn't, depending on how lucky you are.

...Read the full article

No sex shops please, we're Irish!

See also article from comeheretome.com

A brief look at the history of Dublin's sex shops, taking in some of the hysteria and protest that existed around such shops on the island well into the late 1990s. It's an interesting story, in many ways surprising, looking at shops which today dot the city.

...Read the full article