Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There has been a lot of criticism about the state of O'Connell Street. It is a complex problem but it is mostly emblematic of a failure of Government policy on multiple fronts. I want to make a very simple point when people give out about activities that are going on on O'Connell Street. There used to be three supervised public toilets in the O'Connell Street vicinity. Now there is none. Particularly for people who are homeless, as a result of another failure of the State, there is nowhere to go to the bathroom. It is a basic thing. During Covid we managed to introduce supervised public toilets throughout the city. As soon as Covid was gone they were taken away. That is not just true in O'Connell Street but it is true in my area and many other areas. We showed we could have supervised public toilets and it was good and beneficial, but we removed them immediately. Many of the public toilets near O'Connell Street are still there. They are just gated up because we do not put the resources into providing them. That is a basic elementary thing that we could do as well as the supervised injection centres.

There are solutions that could make an immediate impact. Rather than demonising people or somehow giving the idea that O'Connell Street is a no-go area there are basic things that could be done by the local authority and the Government that would make a significant impact as well as improving the lot of people on O'Connell Street.

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