The husband of a woman with incurable cancer in County Galway says the family is struggling to find affordable rental accommodation because of the housing crisis. 

Yesterday Mum of three, Ruth, called The Hard Shoulder to talk about her fear of being made homeless this month when her tenancy ends and Ronan, who likewise live in Galway, called Newstalk to say he had a similar problem: 

“There is nothing to rent in Galway at all and the few houses that we have seen are a ridiculous amount of money - like two and a half, three grand for a month,” he said wearily. 

“So it’s just hard but it’s very daunting.” 

Their landlady is returning from America and gave them their six month notice in the spring. Since then they have been looking for an alternative place to live but have had no luck at all: 

“We knew rental accommodation is few and far between,” he continued. 

“We maybe naively thought in Athenry there might be plenty of houses because it’s not Galway City but there’s very little. 

“None in fact on Daft.ie today.” 

Ronan and his wife, Mags, have five children together and so need a house with at least four bedrooms. 

Ideally they would like to buy but scraping together the money for a deposit is easier said than done. 

Complicating matters further is that Mags will likely be undergoing chemo when they are due to leave the house in November. 

“It is the most stressful thing that I’m worried about at the moment,” Ronan continued. 

“We’ve been through COVID, I run my own business and [we’re] slowly recovering from that. 

“But this is very, very stressful.” 

Emotionally as well the house will be hard to leave as well. The family have been living there for over a decade and it is filled with memories.

“That house was our home for 12 years and this was very, very sudden. And we made our life stories in that home. 

“Our little fella was born just as we moved in, Mags was diagnosed with cancer as we were living there. That house has all our stories and moving away from it is very sad really.”