‘This is not a home’

THE day Debs Burns gave birth to her son Leo should have been the happiest day of her life.

But when Leo was just 24 hours old, she received awful news

Leo was held by a mother racked with fear and anxiety over the menacing cracks inside and outside her home in Páirc na Coille.

The pending result of a pyrite test meant there was very little time for mother and child to bond.

She was so anxious to hear the results that she discharged herself early from the hospital to meet the engineer who relayed the awful news.

“That was really upsetting. My maternity leave was ruined,” says Debs.        

When The Mayo News called to her home last Saturday all appeared so normal at first, right down to her daughter Eloise’s warm welcoming smile and Leo’s merry oblivious cooing.

Inside, things are far from normal.

One phrase keeps coming up again and again during our hour-long visit: “This is not a home.”

Life has never been the same since her worst fears were confirmed on that awful day in March.

The following week, people approached Debs on the street to sympathise, almost as if she’d lost a loved one.

Even Christmas is not what it should be.

She was reminded of that one day in Dunnes, where the site of piles of pretty new decorations almost made her cry.

All she bought there were a few baubles for the tree. She won’t even be replacing their broken Christmas lights 'because I don’t really feel it’s a home and I don’t really want to waste my money buying lights'.

“The last two years have been a nightmare. You don’t by a house not to be in it, we weren’t even in it a year.”

Eventually we finish the tour of her slowly decaying home, where cracks are visible at the front, back and inside.

Gazing upon the fissures at the corner of house the young mother, exasperated and robbed of sanctuary and security, sums it up short sentence.

“It’s sickening. Isn’t it?”