CBD Oil in Ireland: Legal Status and the FSAI Position

On 13 March 2024 the FSAI told retailers to remove every one of the CBD Store's CBD oil supplements from sale, all sizes, all flavours, including bacon, and told consumers not to use them. The stated reason was that the products were novel foods unauthorized for sale in the EU, a status every CBD supplement shares.

Why a legal shelf product can still be unlawful

The FSAI states that several applications for novel food authorization of synthetic and hemp-derived CBD are before the European Commission, but products cannot lawfully be sold while the process is incomplete. On 21 September 2026 EFSA published its first positive safety opinion on a CBD supplement, from an Irish company, Chanelle McCoy, at up to about 2 mg a day for healthy adults over 25 who are not pregnant, breastfeeding or on medication.

The Commission and member states have still to decide, so CBD remained unauthorized when I checked on 29 September.

What the regulator found when it tested

The survey is from 2020, so treat the percentages as a warning about the category, not a current market audit. The FSAI has since acted on individual products, as the 2024 withdrawal shows.

Demand is for a product that the regulator says cannot lawfully be sold, so the practical advice for a buyer is a buyer-beware one. Most of the searches ask where to buy and which is best, questions the FSAI's position makes awkward to answer.

How the FSAI enforces it

1. 2020-02-13

   FSAI publishes a survey of 38 CBD products with the findings above and recalls the implicated batches.

2. 2024-03-13

   FSAI announces the withdrawal of The CBD Store's CBD oil supplements.

The regulator's tool is the food alert that names a product and tells retailers to pull it. A retailer who stocks a named product is on notice.

Buying without breaking the rules

• Ask for the batch certificate. It should show THC and CBD content from an independent lab, matched to the batch code on the bottle.
• Skip health claims. A page that says a drop eases anxiety, pain or sleep problems is selling a medicine claim it cannot make.
• Read the ingredient list. Hemp seed oil is exempt from novel food rules; hemp oil or an extract from flowers and leaves is not.
• Do not use it as a substitute for medicine. CBD can interact with other medicines; Epidyolex, a CBD medicine authorized in the EU in 2019 for three rare epilepsies (Lennox-Gastaut, Dravet and tuberous sclerosis complex), is prescribed by a doctor.

Where Ireland sits next to its neighbours

The UK runs its own Food Standards Agency process for CBD foods; see the UK CBD oil guide. Ireland applies EU novel-food law without a separate CBD regime that I found, which is why the FSAI's position is the core of the story. Read our CBD versus THC label guide and the Ireland hub for the wider rules.