Furious parents are demanding to know who decided to install unisex bathrooms at a new Educate Together secondary school that accommodates 1,000 pupils.
The floor plans, submitted to Dublin City Council for planning purposes, showed two separate toilet blocks, one for boys and another for girls – with a dividing wall between them.
However, a decision was made at some point to shorten this partition to make the toilets mixed sex throughout the school in Harold’s Cross – and the cubicles ended up with both male and female symbols on the doors.
The original plans, left, show a dividing wall, whereas the implemented plan, right, has no wall
Both Educate Together and the Department of Education have denied responsibility for the layout of the bathrooms and pointed fingers at each other.
Educate Together said the toilets were designed in line with department guidelines, but the department said a board of management is responsible for the governance of schools and the operation of sanitary facilities is a matter for each school authority.
The school 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 sinks directing the different genders to separate sides of the bathroom. Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who had raised the issue of mixed-sex bathrooms in schools, said Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton ‘is either not taking responsibility for what’s happening here, or the minister is in favour of what’s happening here’.
Speaking to the Mail last night, Mr Tóibín said: ‘It’s very clear that the radio silence from the department on this, plus the fact that they refused to answer similar parliamentary questions, shows that the minister is either not taking responsibility for what’s happening here, or the minister is in favour of what’s happening but wants to keep her head down.
‘This is a really, really important issue in terms of safe spaces for women and girls in schools. It is the responsibility of the minister to take a decision on this for the protection of girls in schools, and it’s just not good enough that she seeks to dissipate responsibility for what’s happening.’
He earlier referred to the single-sex spaces in schools as being ‘part of a crackpot ideology that has taken hold in decision-making in Government and its departments’.
One parent, Estelle Birdy, told the Mail yesterday that she and other parents are demanding to know who made the changes to the plans and why the parents were not consulted.
‘At some point, someone turned around and said “let’s do it this way” and changed it to full gender-neutral bathrooms. They’ve gone ahead and done their own thing and we want to know why.
Male and female signs were put up in the unisex toilets to appease annoyed students
‘If you look at the planning designs, you can clearly see that there’s a boys’ bathroom and another girls’ bathroom and that there’s a dividing wall going throughout the rooms. But now there’s just a bank of sinks down the middle. This is not about trans-identified teenagers. It’s about privacy.’
Over 27 hours after the Mail initially contacted the Department of Education for comment, a spokesman gave the same response, almost word for word, as that issued by Ms Naughton issued in answer to a Parliamentary Question in February.
A spokesman said: ‘Under the provisions of the Education Act, 1998, the board of management is the body charged with the direct governance of a school on behalf of the patron and the principal 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.’
A spokesman for Educate Together told the Mail on Thursday 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.’
Mr Tóibín previously told the Mail that the comfort that 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.