The long walk to new toilets in St Anne’s Park

When a team from the south side arrived at a pitch in St Anne’s Park for a match against a Clontarf FC team recently, some of the visitors needed to use the toilet, says Aisling O’Malley.

But there wasn’t one nearby, said O’Malley, the north side team’s child protection officer, by phone on Thursday. 

“They had to traipse up to the restaurant in the Red Stables, which caused a 20-minute delay to kick-off,” she said.  

“That had a knock-on effect delaying all the matches afterwards too,” said O’Malley. “It gets a bit embarrassing.”

The ongoing frustrations of St Anne’s Park users over the lack of toilets near certain playing pitches was raised by a number of councillors at Dublin City Council’s North Central Area Committee meeting on Monday.

In addition to being the club’s child protection officer, O’Malley is also a parent of a player on the under-14’s team. 

“Your daughter going into the bushes to do a wee on a Saturday morning in the park is not ideal, at all,” she says.

Red Stables progress

There are currently two toilet facilities in St Anne’s being discussed.

Plans for modular changing spaces and toilets at the Red Stables, at the far end of the lengthy Main Avenue from Sybill Hill, are progressing, said Fergus O’Carroll, senior parks superintendent for Dublin City Council.

Groundworks have already started, and the contractor is expected back on site but is “just not responding to emails at the moment”, O’Carroll said at Monday’s meeting. He’d give them another push, he said. 

However, councillors at the meeting said they’d heard from constituents concerned about the lack of toilets by the pitches around the Woodside area.

Those pitches are roughly a third of the way down the Main Avenue from the Sybill Hill entrance, at the south west end of the park. 

“It’s a small amount of people complaining widely,” O’Carroll said.

Well overdue

“The general view in the community is that we are getting the runaround, with promises over the years not coming through,” said Brian Coughlan, a parent of a girls’ under-14s player, by phone on Thursday.

There is a “huge conveyor belt” of young girls coming through Clontarf FC, with nearly 200 players currently on the roster, Coughlan says.

At the very least, he says, they must have access to clean, private toilets and somewhere to change beside where they are playing. 

O’Carroll, the council parks superintendent, told the North West Area Committee on Monday that the council had done a consultation with local clubs, who said a four-room changing facility with toilets was required in Woodside.

Such a facility requires the “Part 8” planning process, he says. That’s when the council essentially applies to itself for permission. 

In early 2024, then Fine Gael Councillor Naoise Ó Muirí announced in a flyer that €400,000 capital investment had been earmarked for St Anne’s in 2024 to include a “new changing and toilet facility near Woodside”.

So, Coughlan says, parents of young players using the pitches thought that things would quickly start moving. However, now, near the end of another season, teams and parents are still left wanting.

At Monday’s meeting, O’Carroll said the Woodside changing and toilets facility was on the council Parks Department’s programme to bring the proposal to parties in 2025, moving towards design and procurement in 2026, he says.

Meanwhile, the years are passing, and the lack of toilets and changing rooms near the pitches is “a barrier to participation, especially for young girls”, said independent Councillor Kevin Breen, by phone on Wednesday

“It’s just not good enough in Dublin’s second largest municipal park,” Breen said.

The pitches in St Anne’s are used by hundreds of  sports teams each week and the lack of toilets and changing facilities has been an issue for far too long, Breen says.

Clontarf FC chairperson John O’Neill said by phone on Thursday that he has been talking to Dublin City Council about the issue.

He’s confident the council will deliver on their promise to bring toilet facilities to Woodside by 2026, he said.

Temporary fix

During Monday’s area committee meeting, Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney asked about potential temporary measures, like portaloos. 

Young girls are being left in “terrible discomfort”, Cooney said.

O’Carroll says he is “sceptical” about leaving a portaloo in “such a remote, unobserved location”.

They are easily tipped over or burned, O’Carroll said. The council will consider what other options might be available, he said. 

When Breen, the independent councillor, asked about temporarily putting in eco-friendly compost toilets, as used on Bull Island, O’Carroll replied that it “would be a completely different project”.

Well, asked Cooney, since the council “already have a tender for that type of thing”, could eco toilets be installed closer to the St Paul’s fields? On the opposite side of Main Avenue from Woodside, by the entrance from Sybill Hill. 

Those would be in addition to the facility already planned for Woodside, Cooney said.

“Are we to have toilets at every pitch?” O’Carroll said.

Putting new changing facilities and toilets at Woodside was originally the council Parks Department’s idea, O’Carroll said.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” he said. “It has become a stick to beat us with when they aren’t happy with our timeline.”

Elsewhere

At the committee meeting Monday, Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney asked O’Carroll to look at what facilities are available in Bushy Park on the south side, to see if the situations are comparable.

Independent Councillor John Lyons echoed Heney’s request. He says that the council’s administrative North Central Area is “not at the table” in terms of a fair share of capital investment, compared to other areas. 

Indeed, an analysis of the council’s capital programme for 2023 to 2025 showed that for culture, leisure and recreation infrastructure – of the council’s five administrative areas – the council had allocated the least to the North Central Area. 

“I always felt that we’re the poor cousins, getting breadcrumbs,” said Fianna Fáil Councillor Daryl Barron, the committee’s chairperson.

Aisling O’Malley, Clontarf FC’s child protection officer, says it’s frustrating to visit other teams who have adequate facilities, while her club’s members wonder, “why can’t we manage it?”

“If you go to Santry Demesne, Malahide Park or Newbridge House, they have good facilities, managed well,” O’Malley says. “They’re all Fingal County Council, so why can’t Dublin do the same?”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.