What’s he yelling about?
Oh, he’s yelling at me. It’s the McDonald’s security man. I’m to come down those steps right away, and so is the old man behind me, and the young lad in front of me. We’ve not bought a €1 burger between us, and the blue-shirted man is a wise one, with eyes in the back of his head. ‘Buy something or get out’
So, I get out.
It dawns on me then that Dublin, a major capital city, has pretty much no public toilet facilities.
A quick look online reveals this problem is a longstanding one, with a number of issues present even when Dublin had a number of public toilets available to the public. In 1956 The Irish Times reported that the Irish Housewives Association complained that, even in light of the outbreak of polio, one had to pay 2d to clean their hands in one of the capitals public toilets. How very Irish. Still, at least they had public toilets.
The one people pass all the time (and don’t even realise they’re doing so in many cases), is the public toilet facility beside the Thomas Moore statue at College Green, opposite the Bank of Ireland. Still used as a jacks by many drunken Dubliners at the weekend (from the wrong side of a chained gate), it is one of the great ironies in the city that the man who wrote ‘The Meeting of the Waters’ would find a public toilet right next to his statue.
In Dublin, it seems we’re left with three options.
1) Museums. Of course, any visit will also involve a walk around.
2) Hotels. They say few toilets match The Weston.
3) That really, really horrible walk in the Jervis Street Shopping Centre to the jacks there. You know the walk. Feels a bit ‘Terminal 2.’
A recent visit to the Moore Street Mall revealed that the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre mentality has crossed the Liffey, with a bloke employed to charge you 25c to use a substandard bathroom. In a city with no public toilets, can Dubliners really be expected to have to enter a commercial premises and fork out money for a product they don’t want to be allowed up the stairs to use the toilets? In fairness, it’s more than fair McDonald’s don’t want Joe Bloggs using their bathroom if he’s not a customer, but who can blame Joe for trying to sneak up the stairs past the ever vigilant security man?
For a capital city, it’s pretty shameful.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
Glad you pointed out the disappearance of the Meeting of the Waters and other watering holes.
The privatisation of the pee and the poo. Shame.
Try this for a reductio ad absurdam:
http://www.photopol.com/signs/toilets.html
Pure shite.
Most of them were ‘decommissioned’ in the 1980s, the excuse at the time was that they were being used by male prostitutes and drug addicts and so constituted a hazard – as if an over-ripe bladder wasn’t a hazard in itself.
more than likely they were closed to save the Corpo a few bob, although the public jacks at Burgh Quay and underneath the island on O’Connell St – just up from the Spire – were very, very dodgy.
I tend to use Busaras, Easons, or the arts block in Trinity.
My recommendations:
1. Insomnia on the green, incredibly useful if you’re hanging out in the park as the toilets there are NEVER open. The door says you need a code, but it’s usually open. If not, give them the ‘I’ve had too much coffee’ eyeballs and ask can they open the door. Alternatively, if insomnia’s closed, a treck and a half through Sinnotts might have to do. Be weary, i swear the cubicles are made for the whippetiest of whippets. You practically have to back your way into some of them.
2. Ilac centre, eavesdropping in the cubical is a cultural experience worth the walkabout.
woman on phone: “i dont care if you’re waiting all day for me *pause* i’m doing my bleedin eyebrows on *pause* d’ya want to be walkin around with a wonky eyebrowed weirdo lookin thing *pause* yeah, and will ya get us a blue mr freeze. thanks babes”
3. A quick, “i think i left my WHATEVER in the bathroom” usually gets you anywhere
also, there’s portaloos on westmorlan street at the weekend, though i’ve never been tempted to use them. I don’t even know if you can sit in them, or if they’re just enclosed urinals. I don’t even know if you’d want to sit in them actually.
Charlies takeaway across the road is suitably standard for pre-nitelink needs.
Good post,and an issue that seriously needs addressing.
The lack of public toilets in Irish city’s has far reaching consequences,especially for our elderly population. Incontinence is gonna happen to pretty much all of us as we get older,especially us wimmens. No public toilets leaves an already isolated population even more isolated as many elderly people won’t run the risk of leaving home and sufffering the embarrasment of falling short in public.
When out with my mum in Limerick city yesterday she wouldn’t have a cup of tea with me even though she was thirsty,beacuse she said she’d need to go to the toilet after and there are no public toilet facilities in Limerick city.
Anyways, Illac and powerscourt shopping centres are my pic of the loos, or anywhere that has those dyson driers,I love them.
So thats what the yoke beside that statue is, id always wondered. Is it ever open?