Laughter and summer fun have long gone from many of the public sea-bathing areas on Dublin's coast. Once places where thousands of children learned to swim and enjoy their time off school, some public bathing areas are now pariahs on the landscape and eyesores on the shore.

The Blackrock baths are in particularly bad shape. They consist of a large isolated terraced building sitting on the edge of the sea, with a deep swimming pool and diving board still intact. Beer cans are scattered inside the gates to the rear, and dark grime and graffiti decorate the inside.

The Dun Laoghaire baths have three pools, an area for sunbathing and changing rooms. They were last used about three years ago, and now the sky blue paint on the rim of the walls is peeling. Parts of the railings around the pool are broken and graffiti have also been sprayed on its walls. The deeper pool is filled with dark liquid grime.

Seaweed baths, which locals say were used by people for health reasons and by those with arthritis, are long gone.

Bray also had a popular area for bathing but it is no longer in use.

On the north side of the city, Clontarf swimming baths are perched on the shoreline. Local children once learned to swim there and swimming and water polo clubs used them. John Stafford, a Fianna Fail councillor, said the privately-owned baths have been closed for about 10 years and, while there had been various ideas to develop them, there were no plans at present. The pool area and the building that house changing facilities lie derelict and locked.

Ten years ago Dublin Corporation turned down an application to build a two-storey restaurant and parking facilities on the site of the baths. The corporation refused the application on the grounds that the baths were a public amenity and that the height of the proposed building would obstruct the view to the sea. While an appeal against the decision was lodged by the group, MB Investment, it was later withdrawn.

Both the baths in Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire sit on the edge of the Dublin coast and face the sea. Although the summer sun seems warm enough for sea dips, both are permanently locked up with chains. Large signs hang on their walls saying "Dangerous Area, No Entry".

While the baths went out of fashion with the arrival of indoor heated swimming pools, locals said they should never have been allowed to close or become derelict.

"It is terrible that the Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire baths have been let fall into disrepair, and I mean `let'," said John Fleetwood, president of the Sandycove Bathers' Association. He said there was a demand for sea bathing and pointed out that the Forty Foot swimming area is crowded every weekend in summer.

Local anguish over the closure of the baths has been heightened by the fact that many local children learned to swim there.

Actor Frank Kelly recently wrote of his summer childhood experiences: "Swimming at the Blackrock baths was a big part of our lives. Entire summers were spent there, falling in love with a different girl every day."

Pat Walshe campaigned three years ago to stop the closure of the Dun Laoghaire baths. She and other locals marched into the local council chambers with their children wearing water wings to protest against proposals to close the baths.

She blamed the local politicians and council for not having the will to keep the baths open. "They hadn't the will to be bothered," she said.

Cora Howard was also involved in the campaign to keep the Dun Laoghaire baths open and said people in the area had nowhere to swim now. "You could go down with the kids and it was safe. If you take them to Sandycove you have to watch them," she said.

While the Forty Foot swimming area is nearby, Ms Howard said children needed to be able to swim before they went to the Forty Foot.

According to the local council, the baths in Dun Laoghaire were costing too much money to keep open. Eamonn O'Hare, in the development department of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, said while £40,000 was being spent on them, only £2,000 came back to the council from charges for entry to the pool. "People were voting with their feet or their flippers," Mr O'Hare said.

There are issues of title on the above-water section of the Dun Laoghaire baths which would need to be resolved before any scheme could go ahead.

Architect Mark Leslie, whose home and office are just yards from the disused baths at Dun Laoghaire, said it was a tragedy that they have been allowed to fall into disrepair. "A few years ago they would be absolutely packed on hot days. Where do people go now? You see families jammed in to the little beach at Sandycove because they want somewhere sheltered for their children to swim."

He asked why the council could not undertake a thorough refurbishment and franchise a good year-round coffee-shop in the top half of the building.

There are no plans in the county council to do anything with either of the baths in their area. Bray Urban District Council also said there were no plans for its baths.

Both the council and locals said the Blackrock baths would never be used for bathing again, and Treasury Holdings, which has had a lease on the property for the past 2 1/2 years, said - officially - that it has no plans for its development.

There were ideas to have a shopping centre and a leisure facility built where the baths now stand but this idea has been scrapped. It is understood, however, that the need for parking beside the DART station could become a component of any future plan. The issue is a political hot potato due to the concerns of local residents, especially in picturesque Idrone Terrace.

Betty Coffey, a local Fianna Fail councillor, said she would oppose any proposal for a commercial development on the site. "They haven't a hope in hell of getting it. We're not going to give a site like that out to a commercial development," she said.

Vincent McDowell, a Green Party councillor, said the plan to develop the Dun Laoghaire and Blackrock baths would form a plan called the "Dublin Riviera", which would see the coast from Booterstown to Killiney developed.

"Dublin is almost unique among other capital cities in that the sea actually comes in. If they had it in London or Paris they'd go mad over it," he said.

But whatever the plans for the baths on Dublin's shores, they are unlikely to revert to the way they were in the 1950s and 1960s.