So damp even the dog had pneumonia

Things are so bad in ground flat number 16, even the dog has had a bout of pneumonia.

This is where Sinead Martin, her fiance Paul, and her two sons, Noel and Aaron, have lived for the past five years. Looking at the conditions, you wonder if it hasn’t felt like 25 years.

In the front room, the wallpaper is literally peeling away from the plasterboard, and coated with an evil-looking white dust. “That was only done last November,” Sinead says. “It’s rising damp and it’s coming up from the foundations.”

Aaron, 5, and Noel, 9, go to school in St Clare’s in Harold’s Cross. Both are on inhalers and decongestants, while Sinead and Paul are also on medication to deal with the effects of the mould and mildew.

Last summer, the family spent a few months in Sinead’s mother’s caravan: The medical bills toppled. Yet, since January, Noel has missed 26 days of school, with Sinead revealing that some nights he is up coughing so much he vomits. Then the dog — who belongs to Aaron, who has a form of autism — got pneumonia.

The family took him to the vet, who asked if the animal had been kept in a damp shed. When he was told he actually slept in a bedroom, the vet said: “I can only imagine what your health is like.”

Their bedroom is equally affected by the mysterious mould, thought to be Aspergillus, with one corner black from it. Sinead talks about the danger of toys falling from shelves where they may have remained for some time, gathering spores.

Heat on, heat off: the result is the same, mould creeping along walls, across the skirting board, filling the air. Sinead says medicines cost “a small fortune every month”, as do air fresheners and anti-fungal products. It makes the inability of ministers to attend community meetings to address the problem even more galling.

The family used to live in a top-floor flat which, while bad, was not quite as unhealthy an environment as number 16. “We should have stayed where we were,” Sinead admits. She has asked about moving and was told it might take four years. She also wants to stay in the area, despite the other problems experienced by residents in Dolphin’s Barn.

“What area doesn’t have drug problems now?” she asks, enthusing instead about the community spirit around Dolphin House. “We want to stay in a community,” she says.