Parents at a new secondary school have branded the decision to use mixed-sex toilets as ‘disgraceful’ and said that it ‘disregards the privacy of girls’.

The 1,000-student Educate Together school in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, moved into a new four-storey building this week in which male and female students must share a common sink area next to the toilets.

A shocked parent who toured the school shared photos showing gender-neutral cubicles with both a male and female symbol on doors.

Makeshift signs had been stuck on the bank of sinks directing the different genders to separate sides of the bathroom.

Estelle Birdy, who has two teenagers attending the school, told the Irish Daily Mail yesterday that she felt that the decision to replace private single-sex spaces, particularly for teenage girls, was ‘totalitarian’ – and that a ‘large cohort of students were incensed’ with the change. Parents told the Mail that neither they nor their children were consulted about the toilets as part of the move from the school’s previous pre-fab buildings on the same site.

‘Teenage girls have accidents with their periods at school and it’s embarrassing enough when it’s just girls around,’ Ms Birdy said. ‘It’s not about shame, you’re just completing a bodily function but it’s an intimate, private bodily function.’

Ms Birdy raised concerns that girls may dehydrate themselves or get urinary tract infections because they would want to avoid using the toilets, or even skip school during their period out of embarrassment.

‘They are being expected to sacrifice their comfort, and their safe space in the name of progress or equality and to just get used to it. Boys don’t like this change either, but they aren’t being asked to give up their needs and wants the way girls are,’ she said.

Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who had raised the issue of mixed-sex bathrooms in schools, said: ‘It’s part of a crackpot ideology that has taken hold in decision-making in government and its departments.’

The school’s design features a toilet block on each floor with gender-neutral cubicles. There are two disabled access toilets.

Ms Birdy said a decision by management to put up signs on the common sink area directing females to one side of the room and males to the other was just to appease students who were ‘incensed’ at the layout.

One mother, whose son goes to the Harold’s Cross school, and who asked to remain anonymous, compared the new setup to the dystopian novel 1984, saying: ‘We are teaching young people that their innate privacy and dignity can be removed and that no one will listen to them. My son is a lovely guy but he’s six feet tall. Is some 12-year-old girl going to want to queue for the toilets next to big 18-year-old blokes?

‘It’s a free-for-all that was imposed on them without any say. My son thinks it’s disgusting. If there was evidence that this prevented bullying, at least there would be a reason but they have to use a big wide open space with no privacy based on an assumption.

‘Good luck trying to pop a pimple without privacy or adjust your bra or even have a cry because you are a teenager full of hormones,’ she added.

A spokesman for Educate Together told the Mail yesterday that the school’s toilets were designed in line with Department of Education guidelines.

He said: ‘Neither Educate Together nor the school’s board of management had a role in determining the structure or layout of the toilet facilities.

‘The Department of Education’s School Design Guide, published by the Department’s Planning and Building Unit, provides guidance on the provision of sanitary facilities in all new primary and post-primary schools.

‘As your queries relate to the design rationale and policy considerations underpinning these facilities, they would be more appropriately directed to the Department of Education and Youth.’

Department of Education guidelines list toilets as one of a number of school locations where ‘bullying may occur’ and requires that they are designed to ‘maximise passive supervision’ and cannot have doors.

The Department of Education was contacted for comment.

Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton said recently that new standards were being rolled out for schools but that specifics were up to each school authority, in response to a parliamentary question on the matter by Aontú leader Mr Tóibín.

She added: ‘In every case, all options relating to the identification of sanitary facilities, gender-specific or not, remain open to each school authority as is specified in legislation.’

Mr Tóibín told the Mail yesterday that the comfort young people have come to expect when using private single-sex spaces is being forfeited in the name of progress.

‘Most teenagers if you ask them, would tell you they don’t want to share toilets,’ he said.

‘It’s the only private space for lads and girls in mixed schools. Now we have another new school just opened, where they are denied that.

‘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.’

Another mother, who has a son at the school, also wishing to remain anonymous, told the Mail that she feels that the change wasn’t put to parents or students in case they voiced opposition against it.

She said: ‘If it went to a vote and it was decided by most of the school, I’d still be unhappy but at least the school could say “it’s what most people support”. But no... no one asked.’