No city for old men

In 2019, Corkman Dave Kearney returned to live in his native city after 35 years in Berlin. It has been a difficult transition in difficult living conditions.

Dave Kearney standing outside his home in Skellig House. Photo Credit: Pádraig O’ Connor

In 1984, Dave Kearney was 28 years old and had been working for Cork County Council since he was a teenager. On a trip to Kerry that summer, he met a woman from Berlin at the Rose of Tralee festival and they hit it off. 

Before leaving Ireland, she invited Kearney to come to Germany for a visit and he accepted the offer. Though he didn’t know much about life outside of his native Cork, Kearney booked a return ticket to the German capital for one week and ended up staying there for thirty five years. 

During his time in the once divided city, Kearney lived in both East and West Berlin, while working in forestry and landscaping. It wasn’t always easy, but he found a way to make ends meet.

By 2019 however, he had become quite sick. German doctors diagnosed him with lung emphysema, a lung disease which causes shortness of breath. Kearney said his doctors advised him to leave the smog and pollution of Berlin, and move home to Ireland for the good of his health.

Having arrived back to his hometown of Cork, Kearney received an early pension and was resident in Dún Rís on Grattan Street; accommodation for the elderly maintained by SHARE, the Cork charity well known for its Christmas collections.

He lived in this location for two years, but in 2021 he was moved to Skellig House on Rope Walk in Sunday’s Well. This came about, he claims, after he published numerous posts on Facebook showing the mold and fungus in Dún Rís, which he felt was making his health condition worse.

Left: Mold on his Door in Skellig House Middle: Rotten plywood out front Right: Ceiling where water came in

“I was sleeping next to a cooker and fridge and there was mold everywhere. So they moved me here, which is even worse” Dave said.

“I’ve got COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and lung emphysema. I’ve been living in hell for the last five years.”

“One year ago the rain came through the ceiling and straight down onto my bed on Christmas Eve. SHARE are supposed to maintain these properties and I was paying them €18 per week, but all they did was put one strip of emulsion over it.”

Kearney says he has 17 letters from doctors which say he should be moved to more suitable accommodation, but nothing is being done.

Tripe + Drisheen sent a number of questions with a deadline for further information to SHARE requesting further information about living conditions and claims made by Kearney, but no response was forthcoming. We will update this story with a response from SHARE if and when it comes.

In the absence of solutions, Kearney has turned to social media to document his living conditions. He has become a prolific online documentarian of life in Dún Rís and Skellig House, but the problems for Kearney haven’t just been to do with housing conditions. He also had an ongoing dispute with a neighbour, who was moved out five weeks ago. As a result, Kearney is the only one left in Skellig House, all of the other seven units are vacant. 

According to Kearney, he lived under fear of abuse and frequent attacks from a resident with poor mental health.

On the evening of Tuesday, August 31, 2021 gardai were called to Skellig House as a result of an alleged assault. Kearney was arrested and charged with assault on a 79-year-old resident. In Cork District Court, Kearney’s solicitor, Frank Buttimer, said that Kearney had been cooperative with gardai.

In Kearney’s version events he maintains the older man was terrorising the residents and that they all eventually moved out because of this person.

Kearney recounted incidents in which fires have been been set, and cases of urinating in public but T+D have not been able to independently verify this. Kearney has however, uploaded videos in which he has filmed his former neighbour. Often, they make for distressing viewing.

It’s difficult to know what day to day life was like for the residents of Skellig House and where the truth really lies. This is not how Kearney imagined his life would turn out when he returned to his home city and place of birth. It’s a far cry from his childhood, growing up in the Corporation Buildings on the Coal Quay, next door to one of Cork’s most famous characters.

“Katty Barry was my babysitter when I was child. She was like a grandmother to me. My mother’s chickens would go into Katty’s place and lay eggs in her bed.”   

“I came home after thirty five years in Berlin. I lived there during communist times, but I can tell you, it was way better than living here under SHARE.”

Dave Kearney on Chowdiewicki Strasse, Berlin.

“I haven’t had a shower in going on six months. The toilet only works from time to time. There are satellite dishes over the open tanks, so the water is filthy.”

“There are no lights here at night, it’s completely dark. The heating is on a timer. It goes off at eleven at night until eight the next morning. It is then switched off three times during the day. We’re sick pensioners.”

“I know the residents on Blarney Street had no heating for four days during the cold spell in January. It’s a scandal, but people are afraid to stand up and tell the truth.”

While it’s difficult to understand the entire history of this story, on a visit to Rope Walk this week, T+D saw the poor condition of both the outside area and inside of the one remaining occupied home that Kearney is living in.

Kearney also has issues with how payment to SHARE is transacted. According to Kearney, SHARE only accept cash transactions, and in return tenants get a receipt “with no numbers on it.” Kearney says there is no option to pay through a bank transfer.

Public records for 2023 show that SHARE had expenditure of just over €970,000 with a net income of more than €1.4m

It’s clear Kearney is seeking help but doesn’t know where to turn for assistance. As of writing, there are over sixty eight thousand views on his YouTube channel and it seems this is the only avenue he has to highlight his situation.

“They’re letting me here on my own to rot.”