![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/5076702_3_articleinlinemobile_Rats_20in_20a_20sack.jpg\" "\\"Two")
Two dead rats in a refuse sack in Ms Cassells\u2019 home.<\/p>\nA Cork city Southside council tenant has said she and her two grandchildren \u2014 both of whom have additional needs \u2014 have been \u201cterrorised\u201d by rats in her home.<\/p>\n
Sonya Cassells has been a resident in a Cork City Council house in Loughmahon for 20 years and rodents have been a recurring problem.<\/p>\n
However, in the past two years her home has been \u201coverrun\u201d by vermin.<\/p>\n
Ms Cassells said the rats are getting into her home through sewerage pipes in the rear garden and are coming from a vacant neighbouring property, where refuse has been dumped illegally.<\/p>\n
Ongoing issue<\/p>\n
Ms Cassells said: \u201cIt\u2019s been an ongoing issue, but the last two years have been extremely hard. They\u2019re running through the attic, they\u2019re getting in through the pipes, and they\u2019re in walls and under the floorboards.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s breaking my heart and I\u2019m getting nowhere with the council, all the phonecalls I\u2019m making, I\u2019m just getting nowhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m onto them five days a week and they\u2019re saying rodent infestation is the tenant\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe rats are getting in from the vacant house next door. There\u2019s dumping going on in there; you can see over the fence in my garden there are bags and bags of rubbish.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say something if my home wasn\u2019t clean, but you can see I keep it spotless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Cassells stores all of her clothing in plastic boxes, to protect them from the rats. Similarly, all foodstuffs in her kitchen are stored in plastic contain<\/p>\n
Two dead rats in a refuse sack in Ms Cassells\u2019 home.<\/p>\n
ers.<\/p>\n
Her home is extremely clean, and kept very tidy, but she says she is in constant fear and can regularly hear rats running in her attic.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSometimes, I get a smell coming from under the floorboards, and I know a rat has died, and I just have to live with the smell until eventually it goes.”\n <\/p>\n
Terrorised<\/p>\n
Ms Cassells\u2019s granddaughter is 18-months old, and her grandson is four. Both have additional needs and they visit their grandmother regularly. She says they have both seen rats running across the floor.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019re terrorised by the rats. I had one rat run across the floor, and I grabbed the hoover and I beat him with it. You could see all the line of black pee he left across the floor. The man from pest control said that\u2019s how you can tell you have rats, the black pee,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m washing the place with Dettol and bleach every day. I\u2019m just scared one of the kids will get Weill\u2019s disease from the rats,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said Cork City Council was aware of pest-control issues in the area, and while pest control in individual properties was a tenant responsibility, the council had undertaken a number of measures to address the problem.<\/p>\n
They said the local authority was continuously clearing dumped waste in the area, and a pest-control company had been engaged.<\/p>\n
Measures had been undertaken to address rodent entry points, and there had been ongoing engagement with tenants about hoarding.<\/p>\n
They added that \u201ctenanting of the neighbouring vacant property is being progressed as a priority\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Cork city Southside council tenant has said she and her two grandchildren \u2014 both of whom have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,6037,61,60,43,11269],"class_list":["post-445208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-cork-city-council","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445208","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=445208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}