Councillor renews calls for a community toilet scheme in Dublin city centre

During her tenure as Lord Mayor of Dublin, Green Party Councillor Hazel Chu would get occasional unexpected knocks on the door of the Mansion House.

It was often people who just needed to use the toilet, she said by phone on Thursday.

She served as lord mayor from June 2020 to June 2021, across various phases of the Covid-19 response. “That’s what we had to do.”

Though that phase has passed now, the need for toilet facilities in the city accessible to the public remains high, says Councillor Clodagh Ní Mhuirí of Fine Gael.

Other places in Ireland have taken an approach that draws inspiration from European cities like Bremen in Germany.

Both Sligo and Derry have introduced their own versions of the “Nette Toilette” scheme – which translates as “nice toilet”.

Businesses, cafés, restaurants, and shops can opt into a register of places with toilets open to the public. Stickers are put on the doors of participating premises, which are also listed online. 

In Germany, where the Nette Toilette programme has spread nationwide, it pitches businesses to participate with an appeal to their better nature – and financial support.

“With the "Nice Toilet" project, you, as a restaurant owner, demonstrate that service and responsibility mean more to you. And the best part: your commitment is supported – financially and in spirit.” 

At September’s meeting of the North Central Area Committee, Ní Mhuirí brought a motion calling on the council to work with businesses across the city to introduce a “Nette Toilette” scheme here.

The response from Mick Carroll, local area manager with the council, wasn’t encouraging, though. We’ve tried that, it said

Previous efforts

In January 2023, the council “sought expressions of interest from the commercial sector for the provision of public conveniences within existing retail / commercial units or unused premises in high footfall areas of the City centre”.

Owners of retail and commercial units didn’t respond to that market consultation, it said. So the idea fizzled out.

“Based on the lack of interest from the preferred market it is apparent that there is no appetite or desire from the retail / commercial sector to locate public toilets within their existing units,” they said.

Later in October of that year, in a motion to the monthly council meeting, Fine Gael Councillor Danny Byrne pitched the idea of offering businesses a rebate on their commercial rates if they participated.

Adrian Cummins, CEO of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, said at the time that he thought that some restaurants would sign up. 

“A lot of restaurants already allow people to use the facilities and at the moment it’s costing them money because businesses pay for water,” he said.

But the rates-rebate idea was dismissed by then-Lord Mayor, Daithí de Róiste of Fianna Fáil, and the council’s finance manager.

Council finance manager Kathy Quinn said that the council doesn’t have the power to issue rates rebates.

Despite these false starts, it's worth revisiting and engaging with businesses again, Ní Mhuirí said by phone on Wednesday.

“If it's a case that they haven't been interested in it previously, let’s figure out why that is,” she says. She hadn’t worked out what the council had offered to business last time, she said.

Instead of a Nette Toilette-like scheme, Dublin City Council has piloted contracting coffee kiosks in or near public parks, with toilets attached that are open to the public. 

But it hasn’t always been obvious that the toilets are there, and accessible. 

It has also put in standalone public toilets, like the one at College Green, which cost more than €32,500 a month. 

In June, a report from council manager Derek Kelly put the capital costs, and servicing costs over five years, for four planned toilet facilities in the heart of Dublin city – each with four or five cubicles – at €5.7 million.

Flowing well elsewhere

The lack of public toilets in Sligo has become a “thorny issue”, says Gail McGibbon, CEO of Sligo Business Improvement District (BID).

But when debates arise on  the installation of costly outdoor public toilet facilities, nobody can agree on where they should be placed, she says.

The costs are massive too, she says.

McGibbon says that a public toilet costs about €100,000 to install, with a maintenance cost of around €35,000 per year. 

McGibbon also works assessing night-time economies, and is involved in administering Purple Flag awards – for excellence in the management of a town or city centre from 5pm to 5am.

If a city or town had a public toilet, she would often ask how much revenue it generated in the previous year, she says. “I have yet to come across a profitable model.”

So, in Sligo, they tried the Nette Toilette approach, calling it WC Sligo. “That was our solution to the problem,” she says. 

“They’re toilets for public use, and not public toilets,” says Finbar Filan, owner of Filan’s Centra in Sligo Town, who signed up when the scheme began in March 2024.

There have been no issues reported across any of the venues who have signed up, including his own shop, Filan said by phone on Thursday.

WC Sligo businesses are given a small stipend for expenses, he says. Bigger places, like a hotel, with greater footfall justifiably get more than smaller spots, he says.  “It's like a token more than anything else.”

And, as in Bremen, businesses retain the right to refuse admission to anyone onto their premises if they see fit. There’s no obligation to let all and anyone in, he says.

McGibbon says that there has always been a culture in Sligo, and across Ireland, that places will usually let someone use the toilet if they ask. 

But, nevertheless, offering people a reliable database that they can access on their phones removes a lot of stress and worry for many people, she says.

Meanwhile, Derry City & Strabane District Council also started its own version of “Nette Toilette” in 2023, called the Community Toilet Scheme.

It currently counts 17 private businesses and 20 government premises.

The council offers businesses an annual nominal fee of between £300 and £800 to help with extra cleaning costs, water, and so on.

A report presented to its councillors in December 2024 by the head of health and community wellbeing, showed the annual net cost to the council of the scheme is £12,000.

The Nette Toilette scheme in Bremen remains popular, says Anja Leibing of the Bremen Senate Chancellery.

But she has noticed some businesses removing themselves from the list, over the years, she said by phone on Wednesday.

Like Ireland, Leibing says Germany has a culture that rarely sees businesses turn someone away who asks politely to use the facilities.

However, she says, in Bremen some places found that once they had the formal Nette Toilette sticker on their doors, all of a sudden, some people became rude and demanding.

Ask harder

Like Dublin City, Galway City Council attempted to get a community toilet scheme off the ground in 2024, but it didn’t go anywhere.

Galway also put out an expression of interest to businesses, offering an “annual contribution from the council in exchange for allowing the public to use their restrooms”.

There was little to no uptake at the time, said Labour Party Councillor Níall McNelis by phone on Tuesday.

Dublin City Council can’t expect to get anywhere with the scheme if it relies on expressions of interest, says Filan, the Sligo Centra owner. “It doesn't work that way.”

“You have to go out and chat to the business owners and say, ‘Look, this is what we'd like to do. This is what we want to try and achieve’. And let them even chat to someone like me that's done it already and see that there's no issue,” he says.

Many of those people will be doing it anyway, letting people into their shop, he says.

But it’s important to formalise it in some way, he says. “I think it's a lovely idea. It's worked really well for us.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.