A landlord in Cork will have to spend thousands of euro renovating and fumigating a house after tenants allowed two years of rotting rubbish to pile up from the floor to the ceiling.
The landlord, in an undisclosed area of the city, was contacted to investigate a complaint of pest infestation by a woman in an adjoining property.
The tenants, who had been in the house for several years, voluntarily left the house when they were informed that the landlord wanted to inspect the property.
The smell from from the house was so foul it is estimated the windows had not been opened for at least a year.
A woman in a neighbouring house, who identified herself to Cork’s Red FM as Elaine, said the photographs taken inside the property were like something out of a House of Horrors.
“Almost every room in the house was destroyed,” she told the Neil Prendeville Show.
“She [landlord Kristine] was horrified – I wouldn’t have believed it unless I had seen the photographs myself. In one corner, there was a big pile of faeces from their cats and dogs, she said.
The kitchen had rubbish bags strewn from the floor to the ceiling, while pots, pans, plates, cutlery and cups were left unwashed and rotting in the sink.
Animals droppings were found all over the floors, and there were cans and fast food waste in most rooms in the house. The tenants also left some of their pets behind.
Elaine said she became concerned when mice and rat were getting into her house from the property next door.
“We had caught over a dozen what we thought were mice in our house,” she said. “We were told by the pest control people that there was no point treating our house unless the house next door was treated because that was where they were coming from.”
Elaine admits she was shocked when pet control informed her that what she thought were baby mice were in fact baby rats.
“My children were refusing to sleep in their bedrooms because they were so upset,” she said. You could near the scratching throughout the night in the attic and in the blocks by the window sills.”
It was absolutely unbelievable what they found inside the house,” she said.
Landlord Kristine said her husband was last in the property three years ago. At that time it was like any other house.
“It could be around two years’ waste built up. I never in my wildest dreams thought the inside would be like that.”
Kristine, who did not give her last name, said she tried to access the property on a number of occasions but the tenants avoided her. When she insisted on an inspection the tenants left.
She added it will cost her an additional several thousand euro to restore the house. “It is a shell of a house now and will have to be almost entirely redone.”
