Max HeyraudDrury Street is now at the centre of Dublin’s growing discomfort with how and where young people gather, reflecting a wider cultural decline seen in the steady disappearance of nightclubs and informal third spaces across Ireland.
Drury Street has become the latest flashpoint in a broader debate over Dublin City Council’s management of public space, amid complaints from some local businesses about street drinking and young people congregating in the area. Separately, Lips2Ears confirmed it had to cancel a planned event organised with Emporium Streetwear, which was due to take place opposite Ciss Maddens. The developments come amid increased attention on the pedestrianised street in recent weeks.
By all accounts, Drury Street feels like one of the last genuine third spaces for young people in Dublin city centre, somewhere to gather, socialise and exist without necessarily having to spend money. But this isn’t a new issue. Dublin has seen this tension boil over time and time again, with Portobello perhaps the most notable recent example. During the pandemic, the canal and nearby South William Street became symbolic of the city’s lack of outdoor social infrastructure, as thousands flocked to public spaces while pubs and restaurants remained shuttered.
Yet even long after the pandemic restrictions ended, the issue persisted. As The Irish Times reported last year, “several hundred people flocked to Portobello on Friday, leaving a clean-up operation in their wake.” Since then, the canal area has reportedly been policed more heavily in an effort to clamp down on gatherings.
But is it entirely the public’s fault when the city provides so little infrastructure to accommodate people gathering outdoors? While individuals obviously have to take responsibility for littering and anti-social behaviour, the lack of bins, seating and public toilets has become impossible to ignore. During the pandemic, Dublin City Council installed around 150 portable toilets across the city in recognition that people would inevitably gather outdoors. That number quickly shrank to just 30 afterwards, and current figures are no longer publicly available. Toilets installed near St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre were eventually removed due to what the council described as “low usage”, despite reporting from Extra.ie revealing that usage figures had not even been recorded since September 2023 before the facility closed in 2025.
Despite the announcement of almost €6 million in funding last June for four new public toilet facilities across Dublin city centre, the plans remain at the “concept stage,” with little visible progress on the ground. The proposal was originally brought forward after earlier plans to close the temporary toilets at the top of Grafton Street were abandoned, yet replacement infrastructure has yet to materialise.
The contradictions paint an ugly picture. Dublin appears increasingly determined to discourage informal public gatherings while failing to provide even the most basic infrastructure needed to manage them. Public toilets should not feel like a luxury in a European capital city.
The comparison with Copenhagen makes that even clearer. Despite having a broadly comparable population size to Dublin as a European capital, Copenhagen has “approximately 175 public toilets,” according to the official municipal authority. Rather than treating public congregation as a problem to suppress, many cities invest in infrastructure that allows people to naturally use streets, squares and canals as social spaces.
What’s happening on Drury Street feels like part of a broader tightening of control over public space in Dublin. The city wants vibrancy and culture, but often seems uncomfortable with the reality of young people actually occupying space unless it is commercialised, regulated or temporary.
And how does the irratification of third spaces have a ripple effect that crosses paths with the dwindling club scene in the city? There are a few painfully clear threads between the two topics, one being that the current government are often seen as happy to ignore the basic needs of young people. In the last ten years, on average, 63,000–64,000 people have emigrated from Ireland annually, according to Central Statistics Office (CSO) migration figures, and one third of them are aged 15–24, while 80 percent are under 45. We have one of the most youth-skewed emigration profiles in Western Europe. Housing and cost of living are key factors here, but general quality of life is fundamentally tied to both, and if people can’t afford to live here and are being pushed out of third spaces where spending money isn’t the primary function, you have to wonder why people wouldn’t pack their bags and leave. Young people are not only the primary consumers of nightlife in Ireland, but also the ones who have historically made things happen. Yet with clubs making way for hotels, third spaces being clamped down on, and annual migration stats that eclipse the capacity of the Aviva Stadium every year, it’s no wonder that club culture is often viewed as an uphill battle by people on the ground and an afterthought by those in charge.
We live in largely distant times, due to the economic climate and the advancement of technology. Increased home entertainment consumption is having an impact on how people socialise, alongside the growth in remote work (especially post-2020), which has reduced daily in-person interaction. Rising time spent online correlates with fewer face-to-face meetups. Around 13.7% of Irish adults reported feeling lonely at least some of the time in 2023, according to the ESRI, compared to places like the Netherlands and Denmark, which rank among the least lonely at around 6–10%, and notably have stronger social housing stability, community infrastructure, and trust in institutions.
When you look at European cities known for a high density of “third spaces”, there are no official rankings, but cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and Barcelona consistently stand out. Among them, Berlin is often treated as the benchmark, with its unusually dense network of low-cost cafés, bars, parks, informal cultural venues, and late-opening spaces, alongside a long-standing culture that tolerates lingering in public without pressure to spend money. It also happens to host one of the highest numbers of nightclubs in Europe, with Amsterdam and Paris not far behind.
The broader point is that when people have access to spaces where they can simply spend time together without commercial pressure, social and cultural participation tends to increase. Research in cultural economics suggests that engagement in arts, shared leisure, and informal cultural life is strongly linked to social connection and subjective well-being. In other words, people who regularly use shared cultural spaces tend to report stronger social ties and higher life satisfaction.