Kinsale’s superloo now has a twin — in Bangladesh

Fancy sponsoring a Pol Potty in Cambodia?

A Co Cork town council, which has sponsored a toilet in a Third World country, is urging other local authorities with superloos to do the same — and receive a twinning certificate for it.

The idea came from Kinsale Town Council’s Green Party representative Cllr Alan Clayton, who persuaded the local authority to make a donation to the charity toilettwinning.org, which builds communal toilets in Third World countries like Cambodia and Bangladesh.

He said the donation was just £60 (€70) and this was enough to build a toilet in either of those impoverished countries.

This pales into insignificance compared to the amount of money Kinsale Town Council spends on its superloo.

“A superloo costs around €300,000 to buy for cash. In Kinsale we pay €35,000 a year to a company to lease and maintain it.”

He said the contract usually lasts for 10 years, yet the income from the superloo — which can only accommodate one person at a time — is a paltry €3,000-€4,000 per year.

“Meanwhile we have another tumbledown toilet block in the town which we can’t afford to keep open.”

Cllr Clayton, who was responsible for making Kinsale a Fair Trade Town, said he discovered the charitable website and thought it would be a good idea to make a donation for a toilet in Bangladesh.

“We are waiting to get a certificate from the charity noting our donation which we will put up in our superloo. Hundreds of people will benefit from that in Bangladesh.”

He added that in his opinion, other town councils in Ireland which have superloos should follow Kinsale’s lead.

“I think it would be a nice thing, especially before town councils are abolished [next year]. I couldn’t believe it costs so little to build a toilet in a Third World country.”

He added that he’d hoped the town council would have been allowed to buy out its own superloo contract which still has five years to run.

That leaves the council a bill of €175,000.

“We could have bought out the contract for €100,000 but we wouldn’t get approval from the Department of Finance to get a lend of the money,” he said.