Mary Kinsella (35) is angry. "Very angry, disgusted, you name it," she says, speaking at her home outside Loughrea, in Co Galway.
Except that the bungalow close to her family's farm is not really her home. "This is my parents' house. I live in Ashbrook with the Brothers of Charity in Galway, and that's where I am, seven days a week."
"I come home to my parents on an occasional weekend break and during holidays. But this is not a holiday. And my mother is very ill. She had to get up most nights over Christmas to look after me, and this just is not fair on her now."
Mary is wheelchair-bound, with a physical and a learning disability, and has spent almost four years in the Brothers of Charity group home - in a warm environment with five female and one male friend. She had read about the threatened industrial action in the newspapers before Christmas, but didn't think it would come to this.
Last weekend, when news of the impending strike action by IMPACT broke, she went to bed in tears. "I prayed, and I told my house friend that I hoped we'd still be here the following night. I want to ask the Minister for Health how he would feel if he spent every day with a friend, and then lost them for three or four weeks, and had no idea as to when he would see them again."
Mary remembers the industrial action by nurses several years ago, which closed some daycare centres. "I wasn't in Ashbrook then, I was with my parents, and it didn't affect me so much - and we supported the nurses then."
How does she feel about this action? "I feel like my whole world has come apart."
Yesterday was her parents' second day, struggling to cope. Her mother, who is 72-years- old, was up with her on Monday night; she will have been up again at her side last night. Her father, a retired farmer, is 76. Mary's five siblings are working or married and living away.
Mrs Kinsella was delighted to receive a call yesterday morning from her district nurse, offering support. "She knows I haven't been well and my back is bad. I really appreciate that offer."
Otherwise, the Kinsellas have no help. Mary has to be lifted into the bath or shower, into and out of bed. She requires assistance dressing; and her food has to be chopped up.
Her mother also expressed anger yesterday. "I never thought they would stoop so low as to allow vulnerable people to suffer like this. It is the lowest I have heard of yet - the one sector that cannot speak for itself. You can not get finer people than house parents, and there is nothing that they wouldn't do for their clients," Mrs Kinsella said. She believes the union could have done more, but feels that the ultimate responsibility lies with the Minister for Health and Children.
With a long week ahead, she is also philosophical. "There are people a lot worse off than us - people who haven't even got homes to go to at all."
