A chara, – As Dublin City Council has closed or demolished every single public convenience in our capital city, could I draw its attention to provision of toilets on the island of Gozo, Malta?
Gozo (or in Maltese Ghawdex) is a small island of the Maltese archipelago and has a population of around 31,000 people of the Maltese total of 402,000. The population increases during the summer due to the influx of tourists – but at no stage would the population be greater than that of Dublin.
I have had the pleasure and delight of being a tourist in Gozo on seven occasions over the last 10 years. I have visited all of its 16 beautiful villages on more than one occasion. Each village provides male and female public toilets facilities. I and my family have used these facilities as tourists both during the day and night. We have also used them during “Festa” when the villages are thronged with Maltese, Gozitans and tourists for a whole festival weekend.
The facilities were always open, in continual use, but more importantly were spotlessly, pristine, safe and hygienic, well-lighted and always seemed to have toilet paper! The only time I ever found useable toilet paper in a public toilet in Ireland was in the facilities at Trá an Dóilín, An Cheathrú Rua in Connemara a few weeks ago. Maith sibh!
If Gozo can do it, why can’t Dublin? Or any other town in Ireland? And by the way, we don’t need an expensive excursion of officials and councillors to go to Gozo on a “fact finding mission” at public expense. But I am available to travel if called upon! – Is mise,
Sir, – Your Editorial ("A public inconvenience", August 15th) raised some serious points about the lack of public facilities in Dublin. However, it might interest your readers to know that over the last couple of years the elected councillors have at least twice voted in favour of providing such facilities. Once in conjunction with the Dublin Bikes Scheme and the second as a variation of the excellent idea submitted by Alice Leahy and Trust. It would perhaps do everyone a favour if The Irish Timesoccasionally departed from sanctimonious editorials and put more effort into why decisions democratically adopted are not implemented. – Yours, etc,