Mixed-sex toilets are now the “default” design for schools in Ireland, a local lawmaker has claimed, following fresh anger and concern from parents over new school buildings that have no single-sex toilets.
Peadar Tóibín, leader of Irish opposition party Aontú, said the state's toilet design policy raised serious safety questions, having been introduced “without consultation, without a safety impact assessment, and without any data to justify the decision”.
The Aontú leader’s comments come as parents and students in a school in Dublin, Ireland’s capital, were “incensed” over the lack of single-sex toilets at a new school building that students moved into last week.
Government Guidelines
In 2021, the Irish Department of Education released construction and refurbishment guidelines requiring new and refurbished school buildings to introduce unisex toilet cubicles and communal sinks, which may be shared by boys and girls.
The guide said that schools “must adapt to modern changing needs” and was illustrated with images showing boys and girls accessing the shared bathroom facilities.
The same document encouraged schools to include “gender-neutral” toilets and generally to “promote inclusivity”.
Tóibín said on Wednesday 7 May that the policy never went away and that “only the public discussion around it did”.
No Single-Sex Toilets
“The new Irish design standard removes urinals entirely and replaces traditional single-sex facilities with cubicles opening onto shared washbasin areas”, he said in a statement.
“Genuine single-sex provision – where girls and boys have a fully private space including washbasins – is no longer physically possible in any new Irish school.”
In response to a question from Tóibín, Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton confirmed that the 2021 guidance document, titled SDG 02-06 Sanitary Facilities, remains in force.
Quoting from the document, Naughton reiterated the government’s belief that the new designs have “the physical and emotional safety of pupils in mind” and are intended “to promote inclusivity” and “to remove the risk of bullying in the school environment”.
The minister said the operation of sanitary facilities is up to schools, while decisions on whether to mark toilets as single-sex, mixed-sex or gender-neutral “will be based on the ethos and values of each individual school”.
In a statement to Irish conservative news site Gript, Naughton said each school is “responsible for the day-to-day management of the school including implementing school policies. In this context, the operation of sanitary facilities is a matter for each school authority”.
Mixed-sex toilets in schools became a national flashpoint in 2023, when parents at a County Kerry secondary school for children aged 13 to 19 denied claims that students were consulted about gender-neutral toilets at the school.
The school, run by the secular Educate Together charity, was forced to reverse plans to have three floors of gender-neutral toilets in the new €16m ($18.8m) school after parental backlash.
Parents' Anger
The controversy was renewed last week after Irish journalist Estelle Birdy claimed that students were “incensed” by the lack of single-sex toilets at Harold’s Cross Educate Together Secondary School in Dublin, adding that there had also been backlash over gender-neutral toilets at the school.
“[O]nly people who are completely oblivious to the needs and desires of teenage girls especially, for privacy and dignity, would make teenage girls share toilet facilities with teenage boys like this”, Birdy said on X.
“Why have exclusionary toilet facilities been adopted in this publicly funded school?”, she asked.
A number of elected officials weighed in on the issue, with Independent Ireland Councillor Linda de Courcy saying: “We shouldn’t have to spell out the ridiculously obvious reasons girls need access to safe and single sex toilet facilities.”
Aontú leader Tóibín said he understands how the parents feel, describing the decision as being “part of a crackpot ideology that has taken hold in decision-making in government and its departments”.
“Many girls are not using toilets in schools with gender-neutral toilets, because they don’t feel safe and they don’t feel comfortable”, he continued in an 11 May statement.
“All this has its basis in gender ideology. It’s being done in the name of inclusivity, but students using the toilets are not consulted on whether they want this or not, and it’s leading to exclusion.”
Former senatorial candidate Sandra Adams wrote on Gript that, following a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Department of Education, she found no sign of an “official, recorded concern about the potential impact of mixed-sex facilities on girls and boys”.
Adams said she specifically requested copies of any risk or impact assessments conducted on the introduction of mixed-sex facilities. Ireland is not alone in pursuing mixed-sex toilets in schools. In Scotland, a judge ruled that six schools that only provided mixed-sex facilities must also provide single-sex toilets.