Cork city Labour Party councillors have submitted a motion for the January meeting of Cork City Council, calling for statutory No Wait Cards for people with chronic and invisible illnesses.<\/p>\n
No Wait Cards, issued by organisations such as Crohn\u2019s & Colitis Ireland and Spinal Injuries Ireland, request access to toilets in urgent situations.<\/p>\n
The card is a vital tool for people who have conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, which affects 40,000 people in Ireland. However, it has no legal standing.<\/p>\n
The Cork councillors\u2019 motion is based on Kildare Labour TD Mark Wall\u2019s work to place No Wait Cards on a statutory footing, through his Equal Status (Access to Toilet Facilities) Bill 2025.<\/p>\n
Councillor John Maher said the lack of access to toilet facilities is a serious issue for people with chronic and invisible illnesses, and can impact daily life. He said: \u201cThis motion aims to recognise the need to place No Wait Cards on a statutory footing and supports equal access to toilet facilities for cardholders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councillor Ciara O\u2019Connor said businesses can play a role in this.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur motion also calls on the council to develop a \u2018No Wait\u2019 initiative, inviting local businesses to participate by allowing urgent toilet access to people who have a No Wait Card.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councillor Peter Horgan said: \u201cThis motion offers a compassionate solution, by recognising the need for statutory No Wait Cards and working with local shops and businesses with a staff toilet to make them available to a person with a medical condition in urgent need. It also seeks to ensure that future developments by the city council include public toilet provisions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cork city Labour Party councillors have submitted a motion for the January meeting of Cork City Council, calling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[79,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-231342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cork-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}