No hot water or heating for a month: Elderly couple plead with Cork City Council to fix boiler

An elderly couple, who are tenants of Cork City Council, have been left without heat or hot water for a month since their old back boiler malfunctioned, despite logging multiple complaints with the council.

Christine and Jimmy Higgins have lived in a small council house in the Greenmount area for 31 years, and they say that in that time they have been good tenants who “never asked the council for a thing”.

Christine is 74 and Jimmy is 76, and before they moved into their current home in 1997 they had already been council tenants in Clashduv Road for 20 years.

Their home is heated by a back boiler located behind the fireplace in their front room. Water passes through the boiler, into the radiators, and supplies hot water to the household.

They said that in 31 years they have lived in their home, the boiler has never been serviced, even though they have been paying €2 a week “for years” to the council for its upkeep.

On April 10, water began flowing out of the fireplace and Jimmy “ran to turn off the water mains”. They reported the matter to the council’s customer service request centre, but “nobody called out to us”.

Christine said that they couldn’t turn back on the mains, as “that would flood the house” and they have been without running water upstairs ever since.

“We have to wash ourselves in the sink. You can’t run a bath or a shower, and we have to flush the toilet using dishes of water,” she said.

Jimmy added that they had to buy an electric heater for €280 to warm the house during last month’s cold weather.

Christine said that, after they had logged their initial complaint on April 10, her sister had “been on to the council nearly every day, phoning them and emailing them, and we’ve heard nothing back from them”.

She added: “We’ve been good tenants to the council, we always paid our rent and never asked them for anything, and here we are, a month on and nothing back from them,” she said.

Local housing activist William O’Brien said it was “shocking” that an elderly couple had been left without hot water or heat for a month by their landlord.

“This really paints the city council in a bad light,” Mr O’Brien said.

“It’s shocking that an elderly couple has been left like this a month after they logged the issue, and there really should have been an emergency response to this.”

A spokesperson for Cork City Council said: “Cork City Council do not comment in regard to individual properties.

“The Cork City Council customer service request centre is available to all tenants to report repair requests.

“These are then addressed by the relevant housing operations staff.”

The spokesperson did not respond when The Echo replied that the tenants had first reported the matter to the customer service request centre more than a month ago.