Dublin City Council has reversed plans to remove the city centre’s last public toilets following opposition from all city councillors, who described the move as “ludicrous” and “abhorrent”.
The council had planned to shut down the toilets installed five years ago at the top of Grafton Street, citing reduced demand. It had been spending almost €400,000 a year to operate the toilets, put at the St Stephen’s Green end of Grafton Street during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The current owner and operator of the toilets was going out of business and the council said it would draw up proposals for replacement toilets, but these were not expected to be in place until summer of 2026.
Green Party councillor Claire Byrne, at a council meeting on Monday, said the “ongoing failure of this city to provide basic services to meet a basic human right” was “abhorrent”. The council had had five years to procure alternative toilets, she said, but had also been discussing the issue since before she was elected in 2014.
“Very little, next to nothing, has been done, yet we were happy spending €400,000 a year for this unit and not looking for a long-term solution.” There was, she said, a “very clear demand, every single person needs to pee”.
Her Green Party colleague Hazel Chu said that when she was lord mayor she let people use the toilet in the Mansion House. The council should open up public buildings with toilets for the public to use, she said.
Social Democrats councillor Catherine Stocker said it was “ludicrous and exhausting this most basic and simple of things cannot be sorted by Dublin City Council”.
Independent councillor Mannix Flynn pointed out that public toilets had been part of the original contract with advertising company JC Decaux for the Dublinbikes scheme, “but somewhere along the line an official in this council took that stipulation out of the contract”.
Labour councillor Dermot Lacey said it was a “fundamental responsibility of a city or county council to provide toilets”. He noted that toilets had been included in countless council budgets but not implemented due to insufficient funds. “Nearly €2 million has been spent on this one toilet,” he said. “People are laughing at Dublin city over this.”
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Derek Kelly, director of service with the council, told councillors officials had “worked out a solution” over the weekend to keep the Grafton Street facility open “while in tandem we try to develop and finalise an ongoing solution for toilets within the city centre”.
The current operator “is liquidating, that has pushed the situation, they want to cease the service”, he said. However, the council would see if it could persuade the company to continue until replacement toilets were in place next year, and if not, would buy the toilets and appoint a new operator, Mr Kelly said.
The council had initially opened toilets at two locations in 2020, the second at Wolfe Tone Square on the city’s northside. The northside toilets were subsequently relocated to Ryder’s Row off Capel Street but were decommissioned in 2022, with the council citing “complaints of antisocial behaviour in the area and low usage”.
