An icy wind blows through a gaping hole running along the bottom of Mr Patrick O'Dowd's back door, where the wood has rotted away from the pane of glass.
The 77-year-old, who is one of those waiting for central heating to be installed in his house, says he told a Sligo Corporation worker about it six months ago and was assured that it would be fixed. Yet nothing has been done and he has to put a board up against it to stop rats getting in.
Heating in his one-bedroom house on McNeill Drive in Cranmore, Sligo, comes from two electric bar-heaters he has on in the living room. He moves one into the bedroom for an hour before going to bed, and turns one on again for an hour before getting up in the mornings.
He has been in the house for 16 months after returning from England five years ago and in that time no repairs have been carried out. He says that when he moved in the corporation gave him paint but he had to pay a man to repaint the house.
"Oh you couldn't take a bath in this weather, not at all. Or you'd have to call the priest straight away," he laughs, saying he doesn't bother ringing the corporation to complain because he "gave up the chase".
His neighbour, Mr John Harte, also in his mid-70s, lives in similar conditions. Draughts come in through all the windows and doors. These houses were built in the 1970s and the main concern was obviously to keep the cost to a minimum. A number of the pensioners say they had to stuff cracks between windows and walls with newspaper. On one wall there is a huge window from floor to ceiling, and in some cases the bottom pane of glass has been replaced with a sheet of chipboard.
"I think the wind is coming down through the ceiling because of the way I can hear the doors rattling at night," says John. He says some of the older women in the area had to go into a nursing home for the winter.
Life is made even harder for pensioners living in Cranmore because of the social problems around them. They can only try to steer clear of the minority who abuse drugs and alcohol and cause trouble but it's not always possible.
John recently had his bedroom window smashed with a stone at 4 a.m. Two weeks passed before a corporation worker came to fix it.
A couple of streets away, Mr Tommy Currid (68) is trying to recover from a flu, holding a tissue in his hand as he talks. He says this has been the worst winter he's ever had.
"The cold that comes in through those windows is something terrible. It's a health risk for any older person. We worked all our lives and it's terrible to think that in this day and age people can be treated like this."