Pregnant single mother’s rented Cork flat has sewage leaking into kitchen and bathroom

Alina Maranescu in the bedroom of her flat at Church Street, Shandon, Cork. Pictures: Dan Linehan

A pregnant single mother who had faeces and urine dripping into her kitchen and bathroom from the flat above upstairs was forced to leave this week when the ceiling collapsed.

Alina Maranescu, who is pregnant with twins and has a seven-year-old son, has been living in Dickensian conditions in the flat in Cork City. 

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A hole in the ceiling in her kitchen allows human excrement and urine to pass through into her kitchen.

She had to move the plates to stop them from being contaminated but she still has to cook within centimetres of where excrement is leaking from the flat above.

“The urine and poo are coming into our kitchen,” she said.

“The ceiling collapsed in the bathroom and I’m afraid it will happen in the kitchen too, there is already a big hole.”

Alina Maranescu is pregnant with twins and lives with her seven-year-old son. 

Despite alleged repeated pleas for help from her landlord since December 2020 to fix the plumbing, the problems were allowed to fester, leaving her and her son with no shower or toilet for almost four months.

Alina and her child would wash from a bowl in the kitchen, urinate in a bucket, and had to dispose of their faeces in plastic bags.

“It’s like a nightmare for me and my son,” Ms Maranescu said.

Many times my son has said, ‘I hope we’re dreaming now, I hope we wake up and this was just a bad dream’.

“Every night we are afraid.

“During the day, we prefer to stay outside. When we come home, we feel not safe.”

A letter from her son’s school expressed abject horror with the child’s living conditions.

“Over the past year [the boy] has come to school distressed, exhausted, and traumatised,” it said.

“The living conditions this little boy lives in would make your blood run cold.

“He talks of the urine and excrement of the upstairs flat running down his kitchen and bathroom walls.” 

The main bathroom in the flat.

The school said in the letter that it had contacted Tusla and gardaí about the “heart-breaking and inhumane” conditions.

“No child should be living like this,” the letter said.

Extremely antisocial behaviour has also been reported from a nearby flat.

The landlord declined to comment when contacted by the Irish Examiner.

Ms Maranescu said that the landlord has paid for hotel accommodation for her and her son for two nights since the ceiling collapsed.

Last night at the hotel was the first time that she slept soundly in months she said.

“We slept in the hotel last night, but from tomorrow, I don’t know where we will go.

Alina Maranescu putting a plank of wood against her flat door to keep her secure.

“My son is the only family here I have. I didn’t have many friends until I met CATU (Cork’s Community Action Tenants Union). But now I feel I have many friends. Thank you to everyone for helping, it's like a dream,” she said through tears.

Morgan Ó hÉigeartaigh said that CATU members who were involved in housing activism for years have never seen such a desperate and dangerous case.

“This place could potentially kill her and her young child. Wastewater is coming through the roof and there could have been major electrical problems,” he said.

Alina and her son wash from a bowl in the kitchen, urinate in a bucket, and had to dispose of their faeces in plastic bags.

CATU is representing the woman since she came to them recently for help.

“Her landlord is getting paid hundreds of euros in [taxpayer funded] HAP (Housing Assistance Payment). 

“It’s utterly disgraceful that anyone could be left in this way.”