There are more public toilets in Dublin than you might realise

“There’s none,” said Helena Carter. She pauses midway along a black tarmac path that runs straight through the middle of Iveagh Gardens and out the gates toward the enclave of Clonmel Street.

She has lived close to here all her life, Carter says, and there are no public toilets nearby – just the ones at St Stephen’s Green.

“And there should be more,” she says. The lack is especially noticeable when bringing kids to the park, she said.

Just out on Clonmel Street, though, is the Tram Café. There’s a ramp at the back of the container that leads to a cubicle with a “toilet” sign over the door.

Tram Café won a tender issued by the council in 2021 to install the coffee container and a public toilet here.

Oh, says Carter. “I thought that was customers only.”

There’s no sign to say that it’s a public toilet open to all, and others in the park on Friday said they had also assumed that they could only use it if they first bought a coffee or pastry.

The cafe was rolled out under a Dublin City Council pilot to provide more public toilets in or near to parks – but ones that are monitored and ideally wouldn’t cost the council money.

The idea has been to attach them to coffee docks and similar. Only here and elsewhere, it isn’t always clear that they are there.

Tram Café didn’t respond to queries sent Friday. A council spokesperson said Tuesday the City Coordination Office oversaw the contract with Tram Café for Clonmel Street, and there has to be public access to the toilet.

The council “will engage with the Tram Café and agree some signage”, they said.

Dublin City Council Parks Service meanwhile currently has tearooms or kiosks with integrated public toilets in six public parks, the spokesperson said. It is planning to open three others this year, they said.

A secretly public toilet?

There were two warnings written on the front of the green toilet door at the Tram Café on Clonmel Street last Friday.

“DO NOT FORCE ENTRY”, said one. “KNOCK BEFORE ENTRY”, said another. The door was locked, and required a keycode, which was available from the guy behind the container’s counter.

But there wasn’t anything to let passersby know that.

Mannix Flynn, a local independent councillor – who has long opposed what he says is the commercialisation of parks with coffee kiosks – said that constituents have raised the lack of signage for the public toilet with him.

He objects to a set-up that demands people ask permission to use the toilet or get a key or code, he says. “A public lav is a public lav. You shouldn’t have to ask anybody’s permission.”

It should be clear that it is a public toilet too, he says.

Nobody from the Tram Café responded to queries sent by email Friday about why there wasn’t signage to say it was public, and what the considerations are around access without a code.

But the council’s 2021 tender documents said that “The unit must provide an accessible, serviced and clean public convenience to all members of the public when it is open.”

What to expect

Among the six other parks listed by a council spokesperson as already having tearooms or equivalent with public toilets attached is Bridgefoot Street Park in the Liberties.

The Mug Shot Café, a kiosk run as a social enterprise that opened in the park since mid-2023, was quiet on Tuesday morning.

A trickle of people walked past, heads down, through the hilly landscape and towards Bridgefoot Street and the city centre.

Here also, it isn’t clear that there is a public toilet attached.

Managers at PACE Social Enterprise, which runs the café, weren’t available to talk on the phone on Tuesday.

Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty says that he knows there are toilets there and that they are useable. A while back, after an election canvas, some colleagues he was with used them, he said.

But if they’re not obvious, it is an issue, he says. “That’s not fulfilling the point of what a public toilet is supposed to be.”

He is aware that there could be issues around anti-social behaviour, he says, raising questions about the council’s strategy of outsourcing the management of public toilets to baristas.

One reason that Dublin City Council rolled out the policy of toilets connected to cafes in parks and public spaces was that toilets need to be monitored, according to the City Parks Strategy that ran until 2022.

“The provision of public toilets in Dublin has proved too difficult due to anti-social activity,” that strategy said.

Public toilets need to be open but also do need some sort of security, said Moriarty. “I think this is something that we need to work through.”

Further plans

There are plans for three more tearoom-like set-ups with toilets attached to be rolled out this year, said a council spokesperson.

One at Merrion Square Park, another at Palmerston Park in Rathgar, and another at Johnstown Park in Finglas, they said.

Councillors have granted the Tram Café a licence for the last of these, with rent of €8,000 a year in the first year. Dublin City Council will provide paper and soap, and a contractor to clean the toilets, the licence says.

Meanwhile, at the council’s monthly meeting in early March, councillors asked if, under the renewed licence they were being asked to grant to Tram Cafe for its location on Wolfe Tone Square, that outlet would have to provide public toilets.

“We can’t be putting cafes without access to toilets,” said Donna Cooney, a Green Party councillor.

She thought the idea was for the council to offer cheap leases and get public toilets in exchange, she said, and overall save money.

Dublin City Council has shelled out tens of thousands for standalone toilets, she said later on the phone. The bill for the public toilets at St Stephen’s Green hit €32,000 a month.

The Tram Cafe’s location in Fairview Park had to close because it wasn’t viable, says Cooney, and so people lost a toilet when that went.

But the one at Wolfe Tone Square clearly is viable, she said, so it should somehow include public toilets if the council grants a licence for it.

At the meeting, Anthony Flynn, a council manager, said that it was his understanding that there would be toilets connected. “My understanding is yes,” he said. “That’s the arrangement.”

But it wasn’t written in the licence. Councillors held off on granting the three-year licence – which sets the rent at €10,000 a year, with a start date of 1 May 2022 – to wait for clarity.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the council said that the Tram Café at Wolfe Tone Square “uniquely is a re-furbished tram adapted as a café and it has a toilet which is available to patrons and any members of the public seeking a toilet”.