Kilrush resident offered second-hand kitchen

A WOMAN living with her family in squalor in a Kilrush estate has been offered a kitchen from a nearby boarded-up house.
Despite the fact that she is living in freezing conditions in a house surrounded by boarded up homes in Beech Park, John Paul Estate, the local town council is refusing to re-house Adrienne Simmons.
The house has doors missing, cracks are evident in a number of walls, kitchen presses won’t stay upright and rats roam in the back garden.
Ms Simmons lives in the house with three of her daughters, who are all under 14 years of age. In The Clare Champion last month, she appealed for a transfer but since then, very little progress has been made.
Another of her daughters, Joanne Carrig, who doesn’t live in the house in question, said this week that Kilrush Town Council has offered to repair the kitchen with old cupboards and doors from another local authority house, which is boarded up.
However, Ms Carrig, whose invitation to members of the council executive to visit the house was turned down, said that the council confirmed at a recent meeting with she and her mother, that they have been granted funding for phase two of the John Paul Estate Regeneration Programme.
This means that, although a date hasn’t been set for the commencement of phase two, Ms Simmons has been assured that she will be temporarily moved when it starts. However, in the meantime, she will be left in her current house.
“The answer I got was that they were going to put in the cupboard and the doors and then they would look at the rest of the house,” Ms Carrig explained.
“I said that was not good enough. Not a hope. I said they would put in a couple of presses and a couple of doors and then we wouldn’t see them for dust,” she added.
Ms Carrig asked the council for specific details of their proposed repair plan, when she met with Kilrush Town Clerk John Corry and his council colleague, Margaret Clancy.
“I said put it in writing for me what ye are willing to do with the house. That includes the walls and every repair that needs to be done to bring it up to a proper standard and give me a time limit as to when this is going to be finished,” Ms Carrig stated.
However, she pointed out that her mother is going to be moved when the second phase of the estate’s regeneration programme begins. “She is going to have to be moved anyway. I can’t grasp the concept of that. That’s what I said to them. That doesn’t sound right to me. They won’t move her now but they are going to have to move her anyway when the regeneration work starts,” commented Ms Carrig, who has enlisted the help of Fine Gael TD Pat Breen and Mayor of Kilrush, Marian McMahon Jones.
In the meantime, she says that her mother cannot afford the price of coal to heat the house.
Former neighbours of Ms Simmons, who once lived in the now boarded-up houses beside her, have lent their support to her quest for a transfer.
“They said they’d be willing to speak on her behalf. One of the women who moved out told the council she is not moving back in because of the problem with the rats,” Ms Carrig noted.
When contacted, Kilrush Town Council said that they do not comment on individual tenancies.