DUBLIN CITY Council repeatedly told a family living in the Ballymun tower block in which Rachel Peavoy died of hypothermia last year, that their flat was warm enough to live in, a resident has claimed.
Dawn Sherry, a friend of Ms Peavoy’s, lived in one of only three occupied flats in the block on Shangan Road in which the body of the 30-year-old mother of two was found on January 11th, 2010.
An inquest last week was told that the council had turned off the heating in Ms Peavoy’s flat. After contacting the council, she was told the heating would not be turned on because a number of flats around her were empty and because regeneration was ongoing.
After repeated complaints to the council, inspectors did come to measure the temperature, but according to Ms Sherry, the inspectors only checked one room, which was warmer than the rest of the flat.
Ms Sherry and her three sons (aged 17, 15 and 10), lived two floors above Ms Peavoy and to combat the cold, the entire family had been sleeping in the living room.
“They were telling me there was heat in the flat when there wasn’t. They were saying that they can test only one room and I said, ‘Even body heat would make a room a little bit warmer’.”
Ms Sherry had advised Ms Peavoy the night before she died to get heaters from social services, as she had done after becoming frustrated with the response from the council.
“She said she hadn’t been sleeping, she couldn’t get the heat into her and that is when I said to her, ‘Make sure you go up’ [to a social worker] but she didn’t get the chance, she was gone the next day,” said Ms Sherry.
The low temperatures, she claimed, had caused the death of her son’s parrot. It was kept in the hallway, and died on December 23rd.
“I had a heater on in the hall and the fuse had blown in the plug and the heat knocked off and when we woke up the next morning the poor thing was down the end of the cage, she was dead.
“Christmas was just horrible, I had my brother and his two children over for Christmas and they ended up having to go home because it was too cold,” she added.
She said that even after Ms Peavoy’s death, the two remaining families were left without heat, but the only response from the council was to send more inspectors.
“That’s all they kept doing: no sympathy whatsoever.”
Ms Sherry and her family were forced to move out of the tower as a result of flooding last February. They are living in temporary accommodation.
Dublin City Council said it would not comment prior to the conclusion of the inquest into Ms Peavoy’s death. The inquest was adjourned until February 24th.