A life less glamorous, on camera

WHY would you allow television cameras into your home for a reality-TV programme?

It must be embarrassing. Single mother, Shauna Coady, 21, doesn’t agree. She is one of the stars of TV3’s three-part, fly-on-the-wall documentary, The Estate, which airs from tonight. The programme shows the lives and hopes of the residents of Ballybeg, a sprawling housing estate on the outskirts of Waterford City that has a tough reputation.

Coady says the estate is quiet. She was brought up in Ballybeg and when she applied for a local authority house, the only place she wanted to live was in this estate. Coady, mother to two-and-a-half-year-old Lauren, lives around the corner from her parents.