A young family have been made homeless are refusing to stay in emergency accommodation claiming it's filthy and cockroach -infested.
Alan Fitzpatrick, 37, his wife Kelly, 30, and their three children Kasey, 17, Jack, ten, and Bobby, six, decided to pitch a tent on a green in Clondalkin, in the Dublin suburb where the dad has lived all his life instead of staying there any longer.
Last Friday the family were given emergency accommodation in a Dublin city centre hotel by South Dublin County Council, The Irish Mirror reported .
They had spent the last 11 years living in a house in Clondalkin under the Housing Assistant Payment scheme.
But in January this year were told by the landlord they would have to vacate the property on August 26.
The couple had been on South Dublin County Council’s housing list for the last 11-and-a-half years and despite frantically searching for a new house since the turn of the year they couldn’t find anything.
It was this that led to them being moved into the emergency accommodation but after four nights there they couldn’t bear to spend anymore time there.
They refused to spend another night there due to the allegedly deplorable conditions.
Kelly claims that the rooms were infested with insects and cockroaches - adding she even caught a skin infection as a result.
The 30-year-old attended her GP who wrote a letter stating that she “attended with skin rash from insect infestation from the emergency accommodation she was in”.
“I will appreciate it if you could facilitate suitable accommodation for her and her family,” he reportedly told South Dublin County Council.
In videos reportedly of the single room it contained two bunk beds, a single bed and a broken TV.
The outside of the windows were covered in what seemed to be vomit from the room above.
Another video shows cockroaches scurrying around.
But speaking on August 31, Alan said: “We are being forced to go back to the emergency accommodation – a so-called hotel – as the Council said we will be taken off the housing list if we don’t.
“When we went into the hotel the room was worse than a prison cell. Our boys ran out of it crying and refused to sleep there so they stayed with their grandparents for the weekend.
“We had to call an ambulance for Kasey because she got sick and is still in hospital.
“We showed the Council the doctor’s letter and the recordings of the room and we were told we still have to go back to it or we are off the list.
"So we are left with no other option but to pitch a tent on the green to be near the kids’ schools, our family, friends and neighbours.”
South Dublin County Council have been approached for comment.
