How is the council spending €32,000 a month on public toilets at St Stephen’s Green?

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, outside the public toilets at St Stephen’s Green, two staff members stand in yellow high-vis jackets.

One of them pulls on some blue gloves, picks up a spray and a packet of napkins, and disappears into the disabled toilets.

A little while later, Sara Mulqueen and Aoife Sheahan walk out of the toilets together and head towards Grafton Street.

The public toilets are a welcome amenity, they say. “It’s so handy to have them,” says Mulqueen. “They should really be everywhere.”

One reason why they aren’t everywhere, council managers have said, is that they are so expensive.

Dublin City Council is currently spending more than €32,500 a month – or around €390,400 a year – to run just this one set of toilets, its figures show. How is it so costly?

“That can’t be right,” says Sheahan, a woman with pink-streaked dark hair, wearing a leather jacket. “No way,” she says, shaking her head.

At St Stephen’s Green

For years, councillors have called for Dublin City Council to provide more public toilets.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, the inconvenience became a crisis when pubs and cafes closed up and there was nowhere for passersby to sneak in to use a toilet when out and about.

In the summer of 2020, the council launched two sets of public toilets: at St Stephen’s Green on the southside, and at Wolfe Tone Square near the Jervis Shopping Centre on the northside.

“In order to provide necessary facilities for the public in Dublin City Centre during the COVID 19 pandemic it is proposed to install emergency public toilets located at Grafton Street and Wolfe Tone Square,” said a council manager’s order issued in July 2020.

In 2022, the council closed the public toilets on the northside, saying that it was costing around €7 per pee. The ones at the top of Grafton Street were more popular though – and the council kept those open.

A breakdown given to a councillor last year, and documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, shows the different layers of costs that make up the bill.

Initially, the council spent about €62,400 to install the toilets at St Stephen’s Green, suggests a manager’s order from July 2020. That included plumbing and electrical work, materials, labour, moving trees and installing CCTV, among other things.

Hiring these toilets for four weeks would also come to around €4,600, says the manager’s order, which outlined provisional costs.

Three and a half years later, it appears that the council is still paying each month to hire the facilities. Current costs include a “General Hire Charge” of more than €5,600 a month, according to a response issued to councillors in October 2023.

Other current costs include almost €5,500 a month on cleaning and more than €21,000 on security services, says that response.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to a query sent Friday as to whether there was any competition for the contract for the public toilets at St Stephen’s Green.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, public bodies could award contracts without going through the normal procurement process, if it was deemed an emergency.

A search of the tendering platform eTenders turned up no tender for the St Stephen’s Green toilets.

And in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act for tender documents for it, the council did not provide any – but did send a manager’s order for the provision of emergency public toilets.

The council has tendered for different providers of public toilets since.

In April 2021, it tendered for businesses to run coffee docks with toilets that were open to the public.

Some of those businesses that opened toilets together with coffee docks later reduced the number of days they were open.

In December 2022, it issued a prior information notice for “serviced public conveniences”, a way of scoping out if there are companies interested in doing a job.

Guarding the loos

The biggest chunk of the costs for the St Stephen’s Green toilet is for staffing.

On Wednesday outside the toilets, Mulqueen said she was torn about the cost. She is so in favour of public loos she is not giving up on the idea, she says.

“Maybe they don’t need staff there, like, all the time?” she says. “Or maybe they do, I don’t know.”

Instructions for staff at the events security company 1 Plus Security working at the Stephen’s Green toilet seem to suggest that the council originally contracted round-the-clock security for the toilets.

“This is a 24/7 site so do not leave until your replacement comes in for duty,” it says.

But a council spokesperson said by email last week, that “no overnight security is in place”.

The toilets are open from 10am to 6pm seven days a week, said the spokesperson. They are covered by two security personnel and one cleaning staff, they said.

How can cleaning and security cost more than €26,500 per month?

“This unit has 3 separate areas (men’s, women’s and accessible) and is manned and cleaned throughout the day and security is in place to support a safe and hygienic environment to the public,” says a council spokesperson.

An email that accompanied the Freedom of Information Request response said that the cost of providing staff for security and cleaning is €600 per day excluding VAT, while cleaning products cost €705 each month, excluding VAT.

It’s not clear how the cleaning figure tallies with the council response to Danny Byrne, the Fine Gael councillor, which indicated cleaning costs of more than €5,500 per month, separate to security staff costs.

The company 1 Plus Security, which provides the cleaning services and security, did not respond to queries about the costs involved in running the toilets.