Wheelchair-bound woman imprisoned in mobile home
Helen Kelly cannot leave her home; at night she sleeps where she sat by day.
She is effectively under house arrest because Multiple Sclerosis has robbed her mobility and her local county council has failed to supply her with a wheelchair accessible mobile home.
Helen, 54, has left her prison just four times since last February, once to go for a hospital assessment, twice to go to Castletownbere and once just to sit outside.
Her husband Peter, 58, had to build make-shift ramps each time to try and get her out. He is at the end of his tether.
"She has an electric wheelchair, but she can't get out to use it. She has been sleeping in the living area of the mobile home since February. It is only through the kindness of friends that we have somewhere to live at all they lent us the mobile home."
The couple moved to Bere Island from Dublin in July last year and here part of the problem lay. Helen had previously had tenancy of a council house in Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown and when she sought accommodation from Cork County Council, she was still listed as a tenant in Dublin.
"She relinquished that tenancy in February, but when Cork County Council enquired about it, Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown said she was still a tenant and had no record of her handing back the tenancy. It was only after I sent them a solicitor's letter that they found the record," Peter said.
Peter's family home is on Bere Island but it has no running water and no toilet which makes it impossible for Helen to live in.
When she first came to the island she was still able to walk, but now she has no movement from the waist down.
She went for assessment in Cork University Hospital in June and her case was recognised as serious. Cork County Council said she would be a priority in terms of providing her with suitable accommodation.
The Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown hiccup held them up. That was sorted three weeks ago and still Helen lives in her caravan, unable to go out. Although they have been assessed for housing, Peter says no one from Cork County Council has ever visited them or seen the conditions in which they live.
A spokesman for the council's housing unit in West Cork said he hoped to have a decision on their application for a wheelchair accessible mobile home shortly.
In the meantime, Helen can only sit and wait.
