Unable to keep her son safe in their home, a mother asked the council for a safer one – and it said no

About two and a half years ago, Erika Dunne was offered a private rental for her and her son, with the rent subsidised with the housing assistance payment (HAP).

Rather than wait for a social home, she jumped at it. They were both homeless at the time and she was desperate for a place, she says.

Looking back though, she should have turned it down, she says. Like many private-rental leases, hers was strict on not making changes to the home. 

For many renters, not being able to adapt a flat or house can worsen a sense of instability and the feeling that the place they sleep and live in is a house, not a home. For Dunne, the implications have been much graver. 

Her six-year-old boy Ben Walsh has autism, a learning disability, and is nonverbal. He also “has no awareness of danger”, says a letter written by a consultant paediatrician.

“He would need a special child-proofed house,” said Dunne, who has long wavy hair and wears a headband, sitting in a cafe on Parkgate Street.

But in this one, he could reach the sockets, and switch on the gas fire and get onto a ledge at the top of the stairs – which he once fell from.  “And smashed his face off the stairs,” says Dunne. 

In April 2023, Dunne applied to Dublin City Council to be prioritised for a social home, based on how dangerous her rental was for Ben.

In October, the council knocked back her application for medical priority. She had failed to demonstrate that the home was unsuitable, that the medical circumstances were exceptional, and that Ben’s condition would be better managed by changing the house, the response said.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries about their decision.

Dunne tried to appeal. She wrote to the email address on the letter but it bounced back, she says. She tried to apply for an appeal through the council’s Citizen Hub then, she says, but didn’t receive a response. 

After that, over the Christmas holidays while she waited for a response, a fire ripped through her rental home. The family is now homeless again. 

Making a case

Dublin City Council prioritises households for social housing if their medical condition will be “greatly improved” by rehousing them, says a council info sheet.  

“This is only if it relates to the applicant’s housing conditions and the accommodation is deemed unsuitable by reason of disability or illness,” it says, and the case is exceptional. 

Just a fraction of those who apply to the council for medical priority are approved. The council rejects around 80 percent of applicants.

Dunne says she accepts that Ben’s condition can’t be cured with different housing. But, she says, her fear is that he could be injured or killed if she is in a home that she can’t modify to make safe. 

In the PStwenty6 cafe on Parkgate Street, she runs her finger, line by line, along the text of the three-page letter that she wrote to Dublin City Council.

She flagged safety concern after safety concern. “I have locked all windows in my property apart from a sunroof, that has no lock where Ben can open and climb onto the roof from the bed,” she says.

“The littlest thing that people wouldn’t see as unsafe,” says Dunne.

Fairy lights run along the edge of the cafe ceiling. “Like that little wire there,” she says, pointing up. “He would have that chewed, he loves to put things in his mouth.”

She also told them that Ben would benefit from a therapeutic support dog. But, like many rentals, pets weren’t allowed. 

She spent months on her application, she says. 

She included a Health Services Executive assessment of need, supporting letters from a consultant paediatrician, an education psychologist, Ben’s school, and a hospital social worker. 

“Ben Walsh has backgrounds of Autistic Spectral Disorder and Global Development Delay with no awareness of danger, he is incapable to speak or communicate,” wrote the consultant paediatrician.

The doctor flagged several ways in which the property was unsafe. “It is absolutely priority to support Ben living in a safe comfortable house,” she wrote. 

A social worker at CHI Crumlin flagged that Ben had sustained injuries in the house. She underlined Dunne’s concerns about stones in the garden, which Ben put in his mouth, and the freestanding television – and the ledge above the stairs. 

In her letter, Dunne told the council more about how Ben had woken one night, and climbed onto the ledge and fallen. “Ben broke his front teeth and in addition hit his head extremely hard,” she says. 

He needed surgery in CHI Crumlin, she says. But he learned nothing from it because he just can’t understand risk, she says. 

“He has no awareness, like, he would put his finger in a fire, take it back out and put it back in again,” she says. “That is just due to his intellectual disability he will always have that.”

The response

Dublin City Council rejected Dunne’s application for medical priority. 

“You did not demonstrate that your current accommodation is unsuitable by reason of a household member’s disability or illness and that your medical circumstances and housing conditions are exceptional and that the management of the course of the illness will be significantly helped by a change in housing,” says the council letter sent on 11 October 2023.

Dunne tried to appeal. She sent an email to allocations@dublincity.ie, the address on the response – but got an automated reply that the inbox was no longer in use. Use the council’s Citizen Hub website, it said.  

Dunne isn’t impressed with the council’s appeals process. “How do you appeal in writing if they have no email address?” she says. 

Towards the end of last year, she sent queries through through the citizen’s hub asking how to further her appeal. But she hasn’t heard back, she says.

Then, a fire blazed through her house. The fire brigade couldn’t say for sure what caused it, she says.  

Dunne says she struggled to access emergency accommodation. A Dublin City Council worker told her there were no places available, she says. 

A friend staying in a family hub told her that there was space there, and sent her a photo of the sign-in sheet showing two vacancies. 

Dunne said she sent that proof on to Dublin City Council. And only then, and together with advocacy from a councillor, was she accommodated, she says. 

At the moment, she and Ben live in one small room in homeless accommodation. Ben has regular meltdowns and is stressed, she says. “He has no way to express his emotions.”

As he grows, managing his safety and risks becomes harder and harder, says Dunne.

“As a mum, I ensure my priority is to have Ben remain safe at all times,” she wrote, in her letter to the council. “However it is increasingly becoming impossible to do so in this current environment.”