This policy paper examines the alcohol industry’s three-pronged use of 0.0 alcohol products, as a tactic to circumvent the child protection provisions contained in the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 (PHAA), as a means of boosting brand recognition and sales of the alcohol main brand, and a way of displacing soft-drinks.

Despite representing just over 1% of the total alcohol market, 0.0 alcohol products have been subject to aggressive advertising, with major brands using identical branding to their full-strength counterparts, in spaces where alcohol advertising is otherwise restricted by the PHAA. This document further explores new research which reveals that the industry’s promotion of zero-alcohol products is primarily commercially motivated, serving to boost main brand recognition and sales rather than to reduce alcohol consumption or alcohol related harm.

Moreover, this policy document will outline how years of research now demonstrates that children don’t distinguish 0.0 alcohol branding from full-strength alcohol branding, and that exposure to such advertising has a similar effect on adolescents as exposure to conventional alcohol advertising. This is of particular concern given that alcohol consumption among 15–24-year-olds in Ireland increased from 66% in 2018 to 78% in 2025, making this cohort the highest-consuming age group in the State.

This policy paper concludes with a series of recommendations to government to explicitly prohibit the marketing of zero alcohol products in child-protected environments, to ban brand sharing, alibi marketing, and surrogate marketing, to introduce regulations governing the sale of zero-alcohol products to minors, and to monitor the public health implications of zero-alcohol consumption.