Not sick enough for hospital, nor well enough to stay in the house, Sandra Kavanagh’s family have turned to the Fair Deal scheme to find a care home place for their father Sandra Kavanagh and her father Mick in Coole Park, Galway, in 1999 The night before my uncle’s funeral last month, Dad went missing. My younger brother found him wandering the corridors of the fourth floor of the Royal Marine Hotel, Dún Laoghaire, at four in the morning. Travelling to his native Dublin to say goodbye to the last of his three brothers would, fittingly, be Dad’s last hurrah.

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