A single mother says the stress of her looming eviction has made her ill with vertigo. 

Mary and her five-year-old son have lived in the same property for the past four years but the landlord told them in October that he planned on selling. 

“My landlord came to my door with an [eviction] notice and I was just about to collapse,” Mary told The Hard Shoulder. 

“It was Halloween in two days and I was not able to do anything.” 

The family must leave at the end of April and Mary is worried they will have nowhere to go. 

“I’ve tried so hard,” she said. 

“And I’m still trying to find a house on Daft or Rent.ie - any site. 

“Any agency, Facebook, friends, even WhatsApp groups [from] school. 

“Everything, anything, I have found nothing.” 

Home security: a bunch of keys in man's hands. Picture Jim Holden.

Often she does not even get an email back and one of the few properties she was able to see was well over her budget as a HAP recipient. 

“How am I supposed to come by the other money?” she said. 

“It’s six, seven hundred euro more.” 

Mary is at a loss as to what she can do and says “hopefully” she will be given emergency accommodation. 

“I don’t know if they have a place,” she said. 

Her son is “so sad” to be leaving the only home he can remember and Mary says it has impacted her health as well. 

“Because of all this that is happening to me, five months of stress, I got vertigo last month,” she said. 

There were 11,742 homeless people in Ireland in February and the Government expects that figure to increase following the lifting of the eviction ban.

Main image: Mother and son. Picture by: Alamy.com