Cosy caravan for two - mother and son.
By Roisín de Rossa
``I am suffering for the sins of the world,'' says Francis
Kerrigan. More to the point he is suffering for the sins of the
Tipperary North Riding County Council housing authorities, who
have left Francis, who has spina bifida, over three years, in an
unserviced 14ft caravan, which he can't get in or out of. ``If
they ever get to the gates of heaven, they'll never be let in'',
he adds.
Francis is a young man of 28, who lives with his mother Nora on
Ballyvillane Traveller site in Nenagh, North Tipperary. Nora (65)
took a heart attack that her doctor said was so severe it would
have killed a healthy young person. She is on 17 pills a day, and
to prove it she opens her Dunne's stores bag of pills, and tips
them out onto the trailer's seat.
Nora has to lift Francis into the trailer, out of it, into the
toilet, 20 feet away. Francis can only walk on the level with his
frame, which won't fit down the passageway of the trailer.
The two of them share the little trailer. Cosy. So cosy Francis
couldn't get out for days because there was no one to lift him.
Paddy Heffernan, Housing Officer, explains how the ``Kerrigan saga
is a long story, which goes back several years, and he has had
the press beating down the door.'' He had Mr Kerrigan too, who was
carried up to his office last week, whom he kept waiting for an
hour. ``But,'' says Paddy Heffernan, ``Francis is driving round the
town every day, in a car, so he can't be that immobile.''
After three years on the site, and a lot of re-organising, the
Council was able to offer Francis a house in Borrisokane, two
weeks ago. Meanwhile Nora's brother, who lived nearby and could
have helped her, had moved elsewhere, and Nora and Francis are
reluctant to take up the offer. They are asking for a serviced
caravan, with toilet and hot water. How would that have been
three years ago when they first moved onto the site? A few
shovels of concrete would have given access.
Nothing explains why for three years Nora and Francis have been
left to live in conditions which are an ``offence to humanity. Who
is to blame?'' asks, Jimmy Nolan, ex-Councillor. ``Are the County.
Council officials a law unto themselves, or are they answerable
to the elected councillors and people at all? I'd wonder.'' So he
might.
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