‘Rats swim up the toilet bowl — people are worn down with it all’

Vague promises of surveys and regeneration are not good enough, especially when council tenants living in substandard housing conditions have heard them all before, a southside

Cork TD has warned.

Of the city’s currently occupied 160-or-so O’Byrne flats — the three-storey 1960s maisonette balcony flats pioneered by the city’s then architect, Éamon O’Byrne — 90 of them are in Togher.

The names — Clashduv Rd, Cherry Tree Rd, Sycamore Place, Hazel Rd, Maple Place and Togher Rd — may not have the notoriety of the now-condemned flats at Noonan’s Rd and St Finbarr’s Rd, but to a greater or lesser degree share the same problems.

For years, tenants have complained of cold, damp, mould, crumbling masonry, and rodent infestations, and for years, local representatives have made their case to City Hall and Government Buildings, to little avail.

Tenants in flats like Fort St and Dean St on the southside, and Baker’s Rd on the northside will sympathise.

In April, the then lord mayor, Fergal Dennehy, a Fianna Fáil councillor in the south-west ward, said a recent meeting of the local area committee (LAC) with council officials had been “marked by a renewed sense of priority and urgency”.

Noting that problems with the dilapidated Togher flats were not new, Mr Dennehy said it was very evident that the O’Byrne flats were well past their intended lifespans.

“They now require decisive action, either through significant refurbishment and upgrading or, where necessary, full demolition and redevelopment.” He added that councillors had been assured that surveys of the flats would be carried out and tenders issued for works “within a very short timeline”.

The same month that the LAC took place, it was reported that a tenant in the Togher Rd flats who had been treated in hospital after she woke up on Easter Sunday morning to find the rat droppings on her pillow, and her eye swollen shut.

“My vision went completely in that eye, and when I went to hospital they told me my blood pressure was jumping up and down, and my fingertips all went cold and numb,” she said.

Rats in toilet bowl

The previous November, she had shown the markings on the inside of her toilet bowl where, she said, rats swim up to gain access to the home she shares with her four young children.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire, Sinn Féin TD for Cork South Central, said conditions in the flats were “completely unacceptable” and “tweaking around the edges” would not be sufficient.

“The council are saying that they’re going to do surveys of the blocks and the individual apartments, and as much as that is welcome, people in these flats have heard this all before,” he said.

“What we need to hear from the city council is: are they going to follow through on this? What are they going to deliver, and how are they going to ensure that we get proper regeneration of flats that are well past their sell-by-date?”

Mr Ó Laoghaire said that in several of the flats there were severe structural issues, and in most there were serious maintenance issues which were impacting upon the quality of tenants’ daily lives.

“A lot of these residents are very proud people, they try to keep their homes in the best condition they can, but at the end of the day, structurally these buildings have gone well beyond what is acceptable.

“We see issues with the maintenance of the balconies, with railings, with masonry, and those conditions are unacceptable. People pay their rent and they deserve a lot better,” he said.

Glenamoy Lawn and Árdbhaile

In 1971, as Ted and Carmel Tynan moved with their baby daughter Sinead into their new Mayfield home in Glenamoy Lawn, a tenants’ meeting was being held outside, ahead of a planned rent strike.

“We had paid one week’s rent to get the keys,” Mr Tynan remembered, more than 50 years later. “So, then we went on strike.” That strike lasted until 1976, and Cork Corporation carried out seven evictions, among them the Tynan family.

The firebrand socialist republican would later become one the most respected and popular members of the Corporation’s later iteration, Cork City Council, even if few of his colleagues ever shared his politics.

Half a century after that rent strike, he would still be fighting for Glenamoy Lawn’s tenants, and their neighbours in Árd Bhaile.

There are 109 homes in Glenamoy Lawn and 157 in Árd Bhaile. Tenants have for years complained that the neighbourhood is “infested” with rats, an issue exacerbated by a minority of residents dumping rubbish in Glenamoy Lawn’s enclosed central green area.

Almost a decade ago, Cork City Council replaced the old air-to-water heating system which had serviced the two estates, and which the council said was costing more than €200,000 a year to maintain.

Between 2016 and 2017, the council installed an air-to-air system costing €4m, of which the council paid €800,000. Tenants have variously described it as extremely expensive to use, temperamental, and “completely useless”.

In a 2025 report, the council acknowledged “serious issues” with mould growth and ventilation in several homes. In a related issue, tenants claimed rats were using the disused air-to-water heating system’s pipes to move between the flats, with one resident describing it as “a superhighway for rats”.

Last October, council tenants in Glenamoy Lawn and Árdbhaile voted to accept a council retrofitting plan.

The pilot phase of that scheme would see 36 homes upgraded to a B2 or higher level of energy efficiency, with an average budget of €34,000 per apartment, and a maximum of €42,350. That would amount to a maximum cost of €1,524,600.

The council said should the pilot prove successful, it will then bring the remaining 226 homes up to B2 level, to a maximum cost of €9,571,100, meaning the entire project could cost €11,095,700.

When the council announced the pilot scheme last year, Mr Tynan said that even though the council had never admitted it had made a mistake with the air-to-air heating system, it was noteworthy that it had never introduced similar systems in any of its other properties.

Ted Tynan retired in May, at the age of 83, and was replaced by his Workers’ Party colleague, Jerrica Struthers.

She said tenants in Glenamoy Lawn and Árdbhaile had endured almost a decade of uncertainty around their heating, and there was still no certainty as to when the works will be completed.

“People voted for this new system more out of desperation than hope,” Ms Struthers said.

“People are just worn down with this situation where they’re living in cold, damp homes, and they’re spending a fortune on gas heaters and electric heaters because the heating system the council put in simply doesn’t work.”

Ms Struthers added that although the council had recently sealed off the old boiler room and its interconnected rodent roadway, the estates’ rat problem continues unabated.

• This special report was funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.