A Dublin mum has described her "horrible" experience living in an apartment with mould, dampness and a collapsed bathroom ceiling.
Jennifer Duffy has been living in the Artane flat with her young daughter for the past four years. She is a Tuath tenant and told Dublin Live that she has spent years trying to get the issues with her home resolved.
"Around 4 years ago, I was living in an apartment in town and it was full of mould," she said. "I was there with my newborn baby, she was eight months old.
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"I got onto the environmental health and they looked at the apartment and within a few weeks I was offered this beautiful home and I thought it was going to be great. I was looking forward to everything and then everything just crushed, it came down."
Jennifer said that the problems began soon after she moved in. "About six weeks after I moved in it was raining heavily," she said.
"The windows were leaking, water was coming in and there were puddles out in my hallway as well. I rang them about that and they came out, filled the holes with a bit of silicone and said 'that's the job done' and left me."
In January 2021, things became drastically worse when part of Jennifer's bathroom ceiling collapsed. She remembered: "The water was actually after bursting through. I could stand under my light bulb and have a shower underneath it, it was that bad. The water was flying through."
She said in April this year, workers were sent out to remove the rest of the bathroom ceiling but no one has since been out since to do further works. "It has been taken down since April 28 and hasn't been replaced," she said. "I can't put a blind up because the walls are wet and I can't use curtains because they go green mouldy."
Jennifer is also experiencing a problem with mould in her living room and bedroom. "You can see it all in the corner but it's actually spreading across the ceiling to this wall," she said. "There's only so much bleach and vinegar you can use and then it just comes back."
Jennifer emphasised that she is grateful to have the apartment and is not looking to be moved out, but simply wants Tuath to keep it properly maintained. She has purchased buckets of paint and decorations to go up on the walls, but cannot do any of the work she wants.
She said: "It's affecting me and my daughter because there's nothing around, I can't have anything around for her. There's no pictures. I can't make this a family home.
"It's just putting me down and I suffer with my health as it is. When something is putting you down you can't move forward. I want to do up the house, paint it and put all of my new stuff out but I can't. It's horrible, I don't know how anyone can live like this.
"I just want my daughter to have a nice home that she can bring her friends back to and they won't see fallen-in ceilings. I want to have my forever home that myself and my daughter are comfortable in. That's all I want, everything for my daughter."
A spokeswoman for Tuath told Dublin Live: "We are aware of the damp in Ms Duffy’s apartment, arising from a leak in the upstairs apartment, which is privately owned. Our team is actively working with the Management Company and Ms Duffy to address this."
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