“I’m not allowed visitors,” Jessica Molloy explains over the phone, “It’s like a prison cell”.
She sends photos and footage of her room, showing a steel bunkbed against a wall and a blow up mattress on the floor. A bathroom light flickers and hums constantly in the background, while belongings and clothes are stacked in corners and on chairs.
Molloy has been living in a hostel in Dublin’s north inner city since May, with two of her three children aged under 14.
Jessica Molloy's hostel room
Before that, her family of four lived in a two-bed council flat in Dublin 1 for more than a decade until it became “unbearable” due to antisocial behaviour and drug-related intimidation in the complex and wider area.
The “final straw” was receiving a white envelope through her letterbox.
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