Two years on and the water damage is still evident

THE first Judy Kelly and her mother knew of the severe flooding in Cork in November 2009 was when the sewerage started coming up through her toilet and shower.

Within 20 minutes the whole ground floor of the five-bed, two-storey house in Inniscarra was a foot deep in water and sewerage. Two years on, evidence of the damage is still there.

Although a builder said reinstatement of her home would cost about €180,000 her insurance company gave her just €85,000.

Judy is a full-time carer to her mother and lives off the €204 carer’s allowance. Her mother receives a pension.

What work she has managed to get done has been completed “on the cheap” because she cannot afford to pay for proper tradesmen.

Cases like Ms Kelly’s should have been prime candidates for support from the Government’s €10 million aid package for flooding victims nationwide.

Yet as was reported in the Irish Examiner last week, €8.6m of that remains unclaimed and the Government has turned down requests from the likes of the Society of St Vincent De Paul for extra support.

“It is absolutely disgraceful,” Ms Kelly says. Why didn’t they give it to us? I know people in the northside who are also suffering desperately with their houses. I have no insurance here now.

“The €85,000 (from the insurance company) went almost straight away. Only for the financial help from St Vincent de Paul we would not have got anything done. I would also have got loans from the credit union. Once one loan was paid, I would try and get another one.”

She continues: “We worked so hard to put a nice home around us. We had a lovely handmade timber kitchen which fell off the walls. There is no way I could replace that kitchen out of what I got from the insurance company.”

She feels the company’s treatment of their case was particularly bad. “I had made out a genuine list of what we had. For instance we had a dining room suite for which we paid £1,100. The insurance company sent back next to that a value of €250 for an ‘Argos flatpack’. That was an absolute disgrace.”

Recently Ms Kelly tried to get insurance with a company who advertised that they were giving everyone insurance.

“They said ‘not a chance’ without a five years’ no-claims bonus and even after that the only insurance I would get would be without water, floods or whatever because I am now living on a man-made flood zone,” she said.

Throughout the last two years, in spite of the poor conditions in the ground floor of her home, Ms Kelly has been forced to live there for fear the possessions which remained in the upstairs would be looted.

On one occasion she had five men at her door with a crowbar demanding to be let in. They only ran away when two garda squad cars arrived at the house.