Council tenants at Noonan’s Road claim they are still living with rodent infestations in their homes

A month after the chief executive of Cork City Council expressed her shock at living conditions in social housing flats on Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road, some council tenants say they are still living with rodent infestations in their homes.

On the evening of Monday, July 24, Cork City Council CEO Ann Doherty, accompanied by assistant CEO Brian Geaney and city architect Tony Duggan, visited the Noonan’s Road area and apologised to council tenants living there.

In a moment of some small drama during that visit, as Ms Doherty and her entourage crossed 98 Street, two dead rats in the gutter were pointed out to them.

The Cork City Council’s tenants’ handbook states that vermin and their disposal in a rented property is the responsibility of the tenant, but Noonan’s Road residents argue that the source of the rat infestation in their area is the overgrown, disused gardens behind vacant council properties.

Ms Doherty’s visit last month, and her subsequent apology, came after a series of articles in The Echo, in which residents described appalling living conditions and voiced their frustration at what they called their often decades-long abandonment by the council.

The first article in that series ran on July 3 and featured an interview with 23-year-old Rimgita Anusauskaite, who lives with her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter in a Noonan’s Road flat they share with Ms Anusauskaite’s parents and sister.

Ms Anusauskaite, who is pregnant, said the heating had never worked in the three years her family has lived on Noonan’s Road, and she said damp and mould were a constant recurring problem in their home, something she blamed for her little daughter’s health issues.

A further issue in and around her family home, Ms Anusauskaite said, was rodent infestation, with mice and rats regularly sighted there.

A month after Ann Doherty apologised, Ms Anusauskaite told The Echo the rodent infestation is only worse.

“For nearly four years since we live here, there are mice coming in and out, but on Monday evening, my little girl called me to say ‘Mammy, there is a hamster on the balcony’, and when I went out it was a dead rat,” she said. 

“Thank God she didn’t touch it or if it was alive. 

“They are coming from the back gardens which are full of rubbish and I think this dead rat must have been brought up by a cat.”

Ms Anusauskaite said she was very upset at the thought of her daughter picking up the dead rat.

“I am terrified at what could happen. I have never seen as big a rat in my life and my whole body was shaking,” she said.

Another neighbour, who lives on the same block, said she believed rats had got into her flat via drains at the back of the building.

“They’re in my daughter’s bedroom walls and ceiling. They are scratching so bad that there is a dent in the ceiling,” she said. 

“I’m petrified that they will continue scratching and come through the ceiling.”

A fourth neighbour on the same block said her own 10-year-old daughter was so afraid of the noises coming from her bedroom ceiling that she was now sleeping in the living room.

William O’Brien, a community activist who has been working to highlight living conditions in the Noonan’s Road area, said tenants who had initially taken the chief executive and her staff’s word that they would receive help were now extremely cynical.

“Where is any sign of a serious attempt to tackle the rat problem in the area?” Mr O’Brien asked.

Told that some residents were saying Cork City Council had done nothing to address rodent infestation in the area, a council spokesperson said: “The statement is not true. Since the visit of the CEO to the area, Cork City Council has engaged the services of a pest control company who has been taking appropriate measures to deal with the issues that have been raised. These measures remain ongoing to resolve the issue.”