Playboy magazine sells as well as the Farmer's Journal in one Kerry village. Kerry councillor Mr Michael Healy-Rae is the owner of the Kilgarvan shop where Playboy sometimes outsells the Journal.
Sales of around 50 copies a month to people in the village and surrounding area are not unusual, Mr Healy-Rae said. He told the local newspaper, The Kingdom, that the interest in the magazine is not because of any decline in rural morals but is due to "a more cosmopolitan" approach to life in Kilgarvan.
Yesterday he said he has no intention of issuing a Muslimstyle fatwa on the publishers of Playboy. Mr Healy-Rae last year called for a fatwa on author Brian O'Doherty whose book, The Deposition of Fr McGreevy, contained descriptions of intimate relations between a Kerry bachelor and a sheep.
The book had been nominated for the respected Booker award. Mr Healy-Rae later appeared to withdraw his call for a fatwa.
"Sex is still a very popular national pastime - thank God. But there is an awful difference between natural sex and sex with sheep," he said yesterday.
Mr Healy-Rae stocks several titles which women as well as men buy. "I consider buying any of these magazines the same as buying the Farmer's Journal - they are both types of entertainment," he said. "We are out of the Dark Ages now."
Mr Healy-Rae describes himself as "a liberal-minded young man" in these matters and says he has been careful to stock women's versions of Playboy - in the interests of fair play.