Kitchen column cracked right through with bang in the night

Shortly before midnight just over two weeks ago, Mr Stephen McQuillan heard a loud bang in the downstairs of his home at Annadale Drive, Marino, in north Dublin.

When he went downstairs to investigate, the 81-year-old discovered that a 10-inch reinforced concrete column in his kitchen had "cracked right through" just inches above the floor.

Mr McQuillan is convinced that work on the Dublin Port Tunnel, which was being carried out beneath his house at the time, caused the crack. "We are worried about the safety of the house because a whole reinforced concrete pillar has shifted and it is supporting some of the walls. You would hope that nothing would fall down."

In the days before the pillar cracked, mirrors and pictures on the walls had begun vibrating. And the noise of the giant cutting apparatus - which is carving out the Dublin Port Tunnel - working beneath the house could be heard from early morning until just before midnight.

The cracks in the home are not restricted to the concrete pillar. The entire kitchen area has been badly damaged. A crack runs down the centre of one of the main walls and continues right across the ceiling. There are further very visible cracks where the walls meet the ceiling almost the full way around the kitchen extension.

In the porch, cracks have appeared in the walls and some of the pointing between the bricks has crumbled away. Outside, the front gate no longer opens and closes freely because the pillar on which it is hung has shifted. Cement, which was keeping roof tiles in place, has also shifted.

Upstairs, the bathroom door and bedroom doors no longer open and close freely.

Mr McQuillan lives at his home in Annadale Drive with his wife, Joan, and grown-up daughter Fiona. "My daughter is disabled and we were worried when the tunnelling started that it might upset her. But she just happened to be sick for the period that the work was going on under the house, and that seemed to distract her."