Uneasiness and uncertainty were the emotions of the day as Limerick Voice reporter Daniel Ryan took to the streets to ask E-Liquid retailers how the price increase will affect their businesses.
On Saturday November 1 2025, a flat rate of 50c per millilitre of e-liquid excluding VAT of 23% came into effect.
The average bottle of 10ml e-liquid before this increase cost around €5 and will now more than double to €12.30 including VAT. The standard disposable vape with 2ml of liquid will also increase by €1 before VAT.
Shops all over town have seen a surge in online bulk orders with customers stocking up. Darkside Vape Store employee Steven, estimates they have seen two to three months of revenue in the last two weeks with the rise in online orders.
He expressed concern for how their business will survive the coming months given how quiet they expect foot traffic to be. “We have four people working here. I don’t think there will be four of us come January.”
Most are worried about the knock-on effect this will have. Shop owners and staff alike worry about the possibility of knock-off products hitting the market.
Dave Sims from Alvini says, “the constituent parts of vaping liquids, they’re not that expensive at all… you’re going to have a bunch of people making vape juices in their sheds, that’s going to be much cheaper. You know, big black market.”
These businesses were quite annoyed with the taxes on E-liquids with some even saying they received little to no communications from TDs or other local representatives.
A Hale employee said, “on Saturday, it’s going to be a 124% increase on what’s there. That’s a bit silly, considering 66% of it is going straight to the government. It’s not even like we’re going to benefit from this, if anything, we’re going to suffer dramatically because of this.”
The annoyances continued at Elite Vapours on the main street when they mentioned that a “non-publicised 24-hour public consultation” was held by the government after the decision had been made.
“It doesn’t make any sense. That’s not a public consultation. That’s just lip service” said Rachel from Elite Vapours, while owner, Chris added, “we’ve passed all our HSE checks continuously, and work checked multiple times.
“So to do everything right and get zero correspondence from Revenue or HSE, just to be asked, what do you think of this increase? How will it affect you? We weren’t asked anything. It was just enforcement, and that’s it,” Chris concluded.
Store owners and staff alike are worried for their jobs, will they still be there in a couple months? Industry collapse from these taxations is a real fear, and only time will tell if these Limerick businesses may face closure.