Publicans and restaurant owners in the west have been advised by environmental health officers that smoke alarms may be advisable to detect customers smoking in toilets.
Mr Cathal Kearney, principal environmental health officer in Mayo, confirmed that most problems related to the smoking ban to date concerned people smoking in toilets and entrance areas to premises.
"From our inspections we suspect that some illegal smoking is taking place in toilets. This could be overcome if alarms were fitted to avoid the necessity for bar staff to be traipsing into and out of the toilet area," he said.
"There are also issues around people standing in entrance lobbies, smoking. Technically these are not open areas. While we are not aggressively enforcing the law as regards these entrance areas at the moment, that will change as time progresses."
He said there was a huge interest in creating special outdoor smoking areas, but there appeared to be some confusion as to which types of structure were illegal and which were not.