{"id":356705,"date":"2026-03-20T20:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/356705\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T20:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:37:09","slug":"two-children-injured-in-balcony-fall-in-waterford-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/356705\/","title":{"rendered":"two children injured in balcony fall in Waterford \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mother of two young children injured in a fall from a second-floor apartment has spoken of seeing the balcony glass break after her son ran into it while playing.<\/p>\n

Regina Smith\u2019s four children had been on the balcony of the apartment in the Mount Suir complex in Waterford<\/a> city when the incident involving her seven-year-old daughter Nevaeh, and three-year-old Jayden, happened shortly before 11am on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy four kids were out playing, my two youngest ones … thank God they didn\u2019t fall with them. I was hoovering up, and I could hear the two kids calling \u2018Mammy, Mammy\u2019 … I looked out and the whole glass just went. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey were playing catch and the little fella \u2013 he\u2019s light, like, so he wouldn\u2019t have done any damage, he ran to the glass and the whole thing caved out, the bolts and all came off the balcony. My seven-year-old went to grab him and she went flying out with him as well.\u201d <\/p>\n

The balcony is more than 6m (20ft) high. The pane of glass also fell from the railing and crashed to the ground. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe apartment balcony at the Mount Suir complex in Waterford from which two children fell on Friday. Photograph: Alex Cunningham <\/p>\n

The young boy remains in Temple Street Children\u2019s Hospital in Dublin and is understood to have suffered a brain bleed. He narrowly missed falling on a large shard of glass. His sister was taken to University Hospital Waterford but has since returned home after suffering minor injuries.<\/p>\n

A number of ambulances, fire units, garda\u00ed<\/a> and Waterford City & County Council officials attended the incident which occurred at block C of the complex. Garda forensic teams have examined the balcony from where the children fell.<\/p>\n

In an emergency meeting held at 3.30pm on Friday between Waterford City & County Council and Waterford City West\u2019s six elected councillors, public representatives were told the injuries sustained by the children are not believed to be life-threatening. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Mount Suir complex in Waterford. Photograph: Alex Cunningham <\/p>\n

The council has told residents of Block C to stay off their balconies until an inspection is carried out on Monday. <\/p>\n

Letters have also been sent to the managing directors of blocks A and B, advising residents to stay off the balconies until they are inspected. <\/p>\n

The council confirmed it has initiated a formal investigation around the circumstances of the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe council has reached out to the family to offer support and a formal investigation into the incident has commenced,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n

Block C of Mount Suir, which is located on the Carrickpherish Road in the Gracedieu area of the city, has been in the remit of the council since February 2020.<\/p>\n

In 2025, the council received 25 complaints from its tenants, the majority of which focused on chronic leaking issues.<\/p>\n

One tenant threatened to quit paying rent to the council if issues weren\u2019t resolved.<\/p>\n

Another said: \u201cI\u2019ve contacted before on numerous occasions about leaks in apartment that are just getting worse and still absolutely nothing been done about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other complainants raised issues with defective smoke alarms, low-pressure gauges on boilers, sparking sockets and blocked post boxes.<\/p>\n

Local Sinn F\u00e9in councillor Jim Griffin had previously called for the council to form a taskforce to deal with the long-standing issues at the apartments.<\/p>\n

Mayor of Waterford city S\u00e9amus Ryan said his thoughts and prayers were with the family involved and the children.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a parent myself so I want to stress how concerned I am for the family. The council are fully investigating what happened and a structural engineer is on site currently. We will get to the bottom of what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith told The Irish Times she has been in touch with the council constantly about changing accommodation. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been on to the council the last couple of weeks, emailing them about houses that have been going up and we wanted to get into the houses in Kilbarry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mother of two young children injured in a fall from a second-floor apartment has spoken of seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,61,60,43,127509,6513,41846],"class_list":["post-356705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-temple-street-hospital","tag-waterford","tag-waterford-city-and-county-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}