A man who lost his sense of taste after contracting COVID-19 says he is getting used to strange food combinations such as chillis in his porridge.
Declan Cassidy tested positive for coronavirus in March but has lost all sense of taste since then.
He has since set up the Tasteless Cuisine group for other people who may be experiencing the same effects.
Among the unusual food combinations he has adopted are jalapenos in his porridge and chocolate and sundried tomato sandwiches.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, Declan said he initially thought his sense of taste would return "quite quickly" while recovering from COVID-19.
He said: "In March, I was unfortunate enough to get COVID-19, and after the ten days of getting through it I thought my worries were over but I found out I couldn't taste or smells anything.
"I didn't really associate it with [COVID-19] and if it was anything to do with that, it would pass quite quickly.
"I just thought it was going to go away like everything else and I would go back to normal but all these months later and nothing has really changed."
Declan explained that he has "absolutely no taste of anything" so all the go-to foods that he might have enjoyed during lockdown, such as banana bread, are of no comfort.
He said: "My lasagne which I really love is a warm mush, it's horrible.
"The thing that works for me is spiciness, started putting chillis into everything.
"The other thing I started doing was looking at textures rather than taste, in all those weird combinations, it's the textures I'm going for."
'Hope for others'
Declan said the response to the Tasteless Cuisine Facebook group has been "fantastic" and "better than I'd hoped for".
He explained: "We have 400 or 500 members now so there's a huge swell of people.
"It's obviously a big problem here in Ireland but not have there been suggestions of what we might be able to do in term of food, but there have been people who have managed to come through it after quite long times so it has given hope.
"I think we're all very happy to have found each other."
He added: "I'm getting more used to the chillis so I'm having to put more and more chillis into things to get the same effect."
