LiLeax

Great reporting from @JamieMcCarron5 from the Irish Daily Mail. This school in Dublin had single sex toilets in the building plans for the new school, then did a last minute switcheroo and stuck in mixed sex toilets into the new school building instead

This is really a significant development. Neither the Department of Education nor Educate Together are taking responsibility for REMOVING THE TOILET WALLS - *after* planning permission was granted. This is happening across Educate Together schools. Who & why are individuals or special-interest groups secretly meddling with school design to remove sex-based boundaries for children? Whoever is doing this needs to be found. Again well done to the @DailyMail & the women who are pursuing this. We are not letting it go. STOP SOCIAL ENGINEERING OUR CHILDREN. @garmacnamee @JamieMcCarron5 @1Hildegarde @OdohertyI64991 @timcrowley_ @emernowlan @EducateTogether

Hugely alarming that so little thought is given by Irish education authorities to the safety, privacy and dignity of teen girls. Esp as so many teen boys are exposed to pornography. What could poss go wrong? x.com/garmacnamee/st…

@AdamsSandr4794 And why, with evidence-based rationales

Plans change, that's the nature of things but surely parents are entitled to be informed when changes occur and told in clear and unambiguous language what those changed are.

@wicklowwomen4w1 @DailyMail @RTE_PrimeTime @hcetss @EducateTogether @NewstalkFM @IrishTimes @Independent_ie @OdohertyI64991

@wicklowwomen4w1 @DailyMail @RTE_PrimeTime @HCETSS @EducateTogether @NewstalkFM @IrishTimes @Independent_ie

School's mixed gender toilets were originally separate on plans. Thank you Dail Mail for following up on this. @DailyMail @RTE_PrimeTime dailymail.com/news/article-1…

@garmacnamee @timcrowley_

Parents at the Educate Together in Harold’s Cross want to know who changed the plans from single sex toilets to unisex and when. Our coverage today.

Thanks to you both for writing this and to @irishdailymail for publishing. It’s much broader than @HCETSS , and it’s not just a few parents who aren’t ok with it. Other ETs, ETBs, and Community Colleges have done the same with unisex toilets. @HCETTS is not an isolated story, it’s just one of the few that have made it in to the public domain. Why were the plans granted permission by the council changed? Who decided to do that? Who approved it? Why? Based on what evidence? Why weren’t students and parents consulted? Where does the buck stop here? What usually happens, whether concerns are raised privately or make it in the public domain, is that the few that speak can get framed by as random outliers who don’t have all the information. That’s just convenient optics, inaccurate and unfair, simply not true, and is how narratives are maintained while discouraging others from speaking out, and allows schools and @Education_Ire to avoid answering for their actions.

"These cases are not meaningless outliers. They are evidence of what happens when a system designed around contracts is used to create children." @DeptJusticeIRL @roinnslainte @griptmedia @Niall_Boylan @TippFM @NewstalkFM @morningireland @RuadhanIT cbc-network.org/2026/05/dark-s…

As ever we are very grateful to our supporters without whom we could not do this work. We have no large donors or institutional funding. If you are able to make a small regular donation to support our work, you can do so here: athena-forum.eu/donate/

This week we have been in Brussels at the European Parliament meeting with MEPs from across the political spectrum as well as with civil society organisations. We've had some very valuable exchanges about the importance of women's sex based rights, child safeguarding and freedom of expression. It was clear from many conversations we had that MEPs are accustomed to discussions about these issues being polarised and they were surprised to hear a critique of the erosion of sex based rights that comes from people with a background in progressive politics, lesbian and gay rights activism and feminism. We hope we gave them food for thought. Our aim is to move these debates beyond knee-jerk polarised positions and bring scrutiny to proposals like self-ID, conversion therapy bans which include gender identity and the expansion of hate speech regulations.

@BirdyBooky Why did our State funded IHREC (Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission) find it so difficult to answer a straight question? This is after all an IHREC document (see URL): ihrec.ie/app/uploads/do… @AdamsSandr4794 @JamieMcCarron5 @irishdailymail @griptmedia @Toibin1 @AontuIE

@BirdyBooky Super article from @AdamsSandr4794 here. @EducateTogether @HCETSS @Education_Ire @IrishTimes @Independent_ie @rteliveline @RTE_Primetime_ @NewstalkFM @irishexaminer @RTERadio1

dailymail.com/news/article-1… ‘One mother, whose son goes to the Harold’s Cross school, and who asked to remain anonymous, compared the new setup to the dystopian novel 1984, saying: ‘We are teaching young people that their innate privacy and dignity can be removed and that no one will listen to them. My son is a lovely guy but he’s six feet tall. Is some 12-year-old girl going to want to queue for the toilets next to big 18-year-old blokes? ‘It’s a free-for-all that was imposed on them without any say. My son thinks it’s disgusting. If there was evidence that this prevented bullying, at least there would be a reason but they have to use a big wide open space with no privacy based on an assumption. ‘Good luck trying to pop a pimple without privacy or adjust your bra or even have a cry because you are a teenager full of hormones,’ she added.’ Thank you to @irishdailymail and @JamieMcCarron5 for covering this story and a special thank you to this mother of a son for speaking out so candidly and having such understanding the needs of young people.

"The Department encouraged designers to evoke a sense of the ‘powder rooms of yore’, an image more suggestive of Downton Abbey than the reality of being an adolescent boy or girl in the local comprehensive." Are you really competent at all @Education_Ire?

@BirdyBooky Great piece on this here:

These are the toilets in Harold’s Cross Educate Together Secondary School. Fully open to the corridor and with male and female symbols on every single door. The school has, helpfully, laminate a couple of pieces of paper with arrows written on them saying ‘Male’ and ‘Female’. The only sinks are in the middle of the floor with no wall between them. I suppose the laminated signs are the school’s attempt at a compromise as there was uproar from the students a couple of months ago when plans revealed that every single toilet block and cubicle is mixed sex. Only people who are completely oblivious to the needs and desires of teenage girls especially, for privacy and dignity would make teenage girls share toilet facilities with teenage boys like this. It’s either ignorance or something more sinister - a complete disregard for the rights of half of the population. Educate Together my arse. What about girls and boys from countries, cultures and religious backgrounds for whom these shared facilities will be entirely unacceptable? They will self-exclude from schools like this. Everywhere where mixed sex facilities have been imposed on teenagers like this, girls have ended up physically ill because they will stop drinking water during the day because they won’t use these facilities. @hcetss @Education_Ire @1Hildegarde Why have exclusionary toilet facilities been adopted in this publicly funded school?

@wicklowwomen4w1 @BirdyBooky Fantastic piece on this by @AdamsSandr4794 x.com/adamssandr4794…

As most women can remember, being a teenager is a time of acute self-awareness, embarrassment - and often mortification. Coping with periods was high on the list for all these. Separate toilets were a basic necessity rather than a tool of the ideologically obsessed. @BirdyBooky archive.ph/2026.05.07-214…

Rather than conduct risk and impact assessments on the introduction of mixed sex toilets in schools @Education_Ire officials mused about creating 'powder rooms of yore'. My article for @griptmedia on the safeguarding scandal at the the Department of Education and Skills.

The government is pushing their culture wars into schools by ending safe spaces for female students. At the same time they are incinerating tax payers money on Gucci bike sheds.