‘Spend a penny’ means spending a lot says council

“To spend a penny, we're talking about spending a lot of money,” said Director of Services Paddy Connaughton to a request that Cavan County Council look at providing public toilet facilities in every town in the county.

He said that it currently costs anywhere between €40-50,000 a year to maintain public toilets and, to accede to the request, would mean multiplying that figure by “at least 10”.

“It gets to be serious money,” said Mr Connaughton.

The subject was raised at the January monthly meeting of Cavan County Council when Sinn Féin's Paddy McDonald regaled his fellow elected members of a festive season incident when his wife, while shopping in the county town, used the facilities at Tesco carpark.

Apparently shocked by what she encountered, Cllr McDonald himself went to investigate the men's side of the property. “It was not good,” he reported.

He said, at a minimum, the county town should have suitably serviced and well maintained public bathrooms.

Post Covid, he continued, pubs and shops had begun to close off their WCs to anyone other than customers and Cllr McDonald was concerned it could affect tourism.

Last year a toilet block at the Townhall Carpark was demolished to make way for an outdoor performance space and the next phase of development of the historic Abbeylands area.

“There's no place to change a child's nappy or anything,” he observed, again pointing out a similar situation that exists in retail parks in and around Cavan Town.

He asked the council to look at the toilet situation at Townparks “in terms of safety and everything else”.

There was support for Cllr McDonald's motion from Áine Smith (FF), who pointed out the lack of facilities available near to Cavan Town's Con Smith Park also.

“There should be a public toilet in every town in the county,” she added.

Cllr T.P. O'Reilly (FG) suggested the provision would “add value” to a local area, but accepted that it was “not easy to do” for the council.

There was support too from Patricia Walsh (FF) and Brendan Fay (Ind) who backed the proposal “in principle”.

He had “no problem” with people left stuck waiting for a bus in Belturbet asking to use his pub toilets. “We definitely do need toilets in our towns,” said Cllr Fay, who recommended the use of self cleaning toilets.

Carmel Brady (FG) highlighted how the Town Team in Cootehill is working on providing safe accessible toilet and changing facilities at St Michael's Community Centre as part of its planned refurbishment and redevelopment.

She said the job of maintaining a public bathroom was often a job “no one wanted to do”, and added that the toilet at Tesco Carpark was “not a nice place to go into”.

Aiden Fitzpatrick (FF) also commented. He said the plans for Cootehill would be “the first in the region”, and he could not understand why public buildings in towns across the county could not open their toilet facilities to the public.

Meanwhile, John Paul Feeley (FF) asked that the council look to neighbouring Fermanagh where he said public toilets were available.

Shane P O'Reilly (Ind) though objected to the idea. He said the maintenance costs associated with putting toilets in every town could reach in excess of €100,000.

He would rather see “€78,000 spent on footpaths”, and suggested hospitality businesses be offered a VAT reduction or Rates rebate for opening their facilities to the wider public.

He highlighted how St Kilian's Heritage Centre opens its WCs to the public with the benefit of drumming up additional trade for its cafe.

“But putting toilets in every town I believe is a retrograde step,” he added.

Mr Connaughton, responding, stated that “lack of usage and maintenance costs” as well as security often made the opening of toilets prohibitive from a cost point of view.

Self cleaning toilets Mr Connaughton added were expensive, and while he committed to looking at the cost model adopted in the North he pointed out that they also operate from a “different tax base to the one we have”.