'Deeply ashamed': Councillor tells local authority meeting about encounter with tourist who couldn't find a toilet in Cork city centre

The ghost of Klondyke got an airing at Monday night’s Cork City Council meeting, as councillors turned their attentions yet again to the lack of public toilets in the city.

‘Klondyke’, born Jeremiah Healy, was a candidate elected to the then-Cork Corporation in the 1940s, on the single issue of building a women’s toilet in the city.

His spirit was invoked by Independent Ireland councillor Noel O’Flynn who, at the council meeting, warned that with so few public conveniences in the city and with councillors eventually having to face the electorate, there might yet be “another Klondyke”.

Mr O’Flynn’s contribution came during a long debate which followed a motion — submitted initially by former Social Democrats councillor Pádraig Rice, now a TD for Cork South Central — that the council should commit to opening three new public toilets each year for the next five years.

Speaking on the proposal, Social Democrats councillor Niamh O’Connor said she believed that all councillors would agree that the city needs many more public toilets.

People Before Profit/Solidarity councillor Brian McCarthy said he had been “deeply ashamed” when an elderly tourist had told Mr McCarthy that the tourist had soiled himself because he hadn’t been able to find a public convenience in the city centre.

Both Sinn Féin’s Joe Lynch and Labour’s John Maher likened the debate to Groundhog Day, with Mr Maher agreeing with Mr McCarthy’s description of the public toilet situated next door to the City Library on Grand Parade as “the best-kept secret in Cork”.

Fianna Fáil’s Seán Martin said this was a matter which should be discussed at a strategic policy meeting rather than in a full council meeting.

“The SPC [strategic policy meeting] in question here should be formulating a rolling programme over the next five years and coming back into the council chamber saying: ‘We’ve identified an area for a new toilet,’ and then you target the budget for it,” he said. “I just think that committee should come back and say: ‘This is the programme we have in mind, and let’s find the funding for it’.”

On a point of history, Green Party councillor Dan Boyle, Lord Mayor of Cork, noted that the Klondyke toilet is still standing, if disused, moved years back from Lavitt’s Quay to Kyrl’s Quay and behind hoarding outside the Bridewell Garda Station.

“Can we reopen it?” asked Mr O’Flynn.