Irish secondary school rolls back on exclusively gender neutral toilets

[Jumpersaurus]

I can't find a link, but just watched the 9pm RTE news and Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí, a secondary school in Kerry (13-18 year olds) has rolled back on plans to have exclusively gender neutral toilets in its brand new building for a school of c.300 students. This is after complaints from parents who weren't consulted in the plans. They've now agreed to have male, female and gender neutral toilets. As it should always be.

Good.
I'm trying to think back in the timeline though.

Afair, the policy was that new schools would have gender neutral toilets, this is a new building so was probably planned that way a couple of years ago in the planning stage.

But about this time last year, maybe a little later there was a bit of fuss when it was made known, Laoise from the Countess went on Joe Duffy I think. It was rolled back.

Shame on Gaelscoil Chiarrai for trying to sneak it back in. 😡

But how do they actually define male and female? If a trans student has to use gender neutral toilets, that's surely discrimination?

I'm not sure of how things have played out before this week, I just know it was on the news earlier this week that there was backlash and then again this evening that they'd rolled back. I think rather than the decision itself it's most notable that it was on the RTE news - people who will have no knowledge of the issues will be made aware of the ridiculousness of the proposals, and the reasonableness of the solution!

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41104426.html

"The building is designed in accordance with new Department of Education guidelines, with all toilets suitable for either boys or girls. It is up to each school, however, to assign the toilets.
The original plans for unisex or gender-neutral toilets across the school have caused concern among some parents.
A compromise has been reached between the parents and the board of management, where toilets will be all male on the third floor, all female on the middle and unisex on the bottom floor."

Sounds like they'll have students running up and down stairs between lessons to get to the bathrooms. What are the bets the ground floor unisex will end up being exclusively used by the boys?

You could define it by biological sex, as they're under 18, and offer gender neutral if that's what they'd prefer.

Between this utter BULLSHIT and the LGFA I'm ready to ...to.... start using immoderate language.

I've just read a piece in the Indo that FG members are getting more emails about this topic than the eviction ban.
That will be spun, of course.
But it affects more people than the eviction ban - every bloody one of us.

A link to that Irish Independent report: Fine Gael TDs ‘getting more emails on transgender issues than on the eviction ban’ party meeting hears.

The principal of Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí, Ruairí Ó Cinnéide, was interviewed on Radio Kerry yesterday, the segment is here: Gender Neutral Toilet Row at Tralee School.

And Gript.ie has a long-ish report today here, detailing why mixed-sex bathrooms are such a terrible idea for schoolchildren: Kerry school backs off on three floors of gender-neutral toilets after backlash from parents.