Ill pensioner without water for the past two months

BY CIARAN TIERNEY

An elderly lady who requires constant medical care has been forced to go without a domestic water supply for two months due to an inadequate pipeline.

So tough were the living conditions faced by Lola (Dolores) Glynn over recent weeks that her son John has been compelled to move his young family back from Dublin in order to look after her at Mount Eden on the Kingston Road.

Lola, whose late husband Gerry used to own Glynn’s Shop on Shop Street, has Alzheimer’s disease and requires 24 hour health care. She has been unable to wash properly in the house, which has been modified due to her needs, since early November.

“We had to move Mam down to her sister’s house in Lower Taylor’s Hill, where there was water, just so that she could have a bath or a shower,” said John Glynn yesterday. “Mam was in hospital just before Christmas and after that we could not put her back down to her sister’s house, so we have had to move here from Dublin. She has a full-time carer, but it’s still a nightmare.

“We alerted the Council to the problem of an inadequate water supply as far back as November 2009, as we used to lose the supply at times, and workmen arrived to start digging a hole in the second week in November.”

Hundreds of households then lost their supplies when the ‘big freeze’ occurred early last month and Mr. Glynn said he “had not heard anything” from the Council since December 22.

"The Council delivered some water to us on December 22 and when we do get a few drops it can take three minutes to fill a pint glass. That’s as good as it gets.”John said that he was compelled to move back from Dublin with his wife, Sinead, and new-born baby, who arrived in October, because of his mother’s living conditions.

Director of Services Ciaran Hayes said that the Council had been carrying out improvement works to the network in the Kingston area immediately prior to last month’s big freeze.

He said that arrangements were made to provide a ‘bowser’ at Mount Eden, which is a mobile water tank which is deployed to distribute fresh water in emergency situations.

We did what we could but, given the scale of what we were dealing with throughout the city over the last few weeks, we had to prioritise,” said Mr. Hayes.

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