Are we really making adults ask permission to use the toilet?

A radio discussion on public toilets puts an incredulous Marc deFaoite in mind of one particularly sadistic schoolmaster

The ‘Morning Ireland’ report included an interview with a woman who explained that the situation in Ireland is so dire that people have to wear adult diapers as insurance. File picture: Denis Linihane

Back in the good old, bad old, school days in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we used to have to ask the teacher permission to go to the toilet — and it had to be in Irish.

“An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?” is a sentence that was drilled into us early and often. Perhaps it’s still like that in schools. I don’t know — I left Ireland in the ‘80s and have never lived there since.

That doesn’t mean I have completely lost every connection to the country, but it does mean I have spent my entire adult life as something of an outsider looking in.

There’s always a certain reverse culture shock for me whenever I return to visit friends and family. The Ireland I grew up in largely no longer exists. And, in many ways, thankfully.

I was reminded of this distant past while listening to a report on Morning Ireland about No Wait cards that allow people suffering from certain medical conditions to access to toilets in public settings. I even rewound the recording to make sure I had heard correctly.

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Yes, it seems Ireland is still making grown adults say the equivalent of an “bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?”

I live in a small town in France. For just over 9,000 inhabitants, there are nine separate locations with public toilets for a total of 15 individual toilets plus urinals. One location even has showering facilities. 

No toilet is any more than a five-minute walk away no matter where you are in town. The facilities are maintained and cleaned daily by the town council, and paid for through taxes on local businesses.

They are all accessible 24 hours a day. Nobody needs a card that says the equivalent of “an bhfuil cead agam ag dul go dti an leithreas?”

The adequate provision of public toilets doesn’t seem like it should be something extraordinary. The Morning Ireland report included an interview with a woman who explained that the situation in Ireland is so dire that people have to wear adult diapers as insurance against getting caught short.

When I was a student in Dublin in the 1980s, there used to be public toilets on O’Connell Street and College Green.

But they were closed because they gained a reputation for being meeting places for gay men. I often had need of the toilets downstairs in Busáras before or after a bus journey. 

Rare were the times I wasn’t propositioned. It was definitely a thing.

Ireland officially decriminalised homosexuality in 1993. That’s an Ireland I have never lived in. The Ireland I grew up in was a closeted place, I’m tempted to say a water-closeted place, when the Catholic Church still had its hand firmly clasped on the lever of power. 

While its own well-documented sexual shenanigans were being swept under parochial carpets throughout the country (and ruining the lives of so many people in Ireland), it was decided that one of the ways to tackle homosexuality among the non-ordained would be to close public toilets.

I don’t remember there being a whole lot of uproar about it at the time, but it did serve to reinforce the idea of public toilets as being somehow unseemly — if not down right sinful places.

At risk of pointing out the obvious — toilets are not a luxury, they are a necessity. Surely there isn’t a single minister in power who doesn’t need to use the toilet daily?  File picture: Larry Cummins

In many ways, the Ireland of the 21st century is a better place. Or at least that’s how it seems to me from afar, and my occasional visits over the past decades. There are other ways and more salubrious settings for men to meet these days. But, when it comes to public toilets, Ireland still leaves a lot to be desired.

There is an incident from primary school that still burns in my mind so many decades later. I went to a tiny village school. The headmaster was a complicated man, fond of the drink, fast with his fists, and ready with the cane.

When he was in a particularly cruel mood, he would make the child who had asked “an bhfuil cead agam ag dul go dti an leithreas?” stand in a corner instead.

His twisted reasoning was that if we hadn’t really needed to go to the toilet, the corner would teach us not to test him. The problem was that often we did really need to go. Which, of course, he knew.

I stood trembling in the classroom corner, until the inevitable happened.

There is a special shame associated with wetting yourself in public. I was far from the only one forced to suffer through the same ordeal. As a child, you blame yourself for everything.

I later understood that, for our sadistic teacher, the exercise of power and our humiliation was the point.

I sometimes think half my generation came out of the Irish schooling system terrorised and suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Ireland has shrugged off many of its shackles and hang-ups since then, and become one of the wealthiest and most socially progressive countries on the planet. The Irish Government has more than enough money to provide such a basic service as accessible public toilets. 

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At risk of pointing out the obvious — toilets are not a luxury, they are a necessity. Surely there isn’t a single minister in power who doesn’t need to use the toilet daily? 

It is long past time to build the infrastructure that adds to the basic standard of living, and allow people easy access to public toilets when and where they need it.

• Marc deFaoite is an Irish writer and translator living in France