Tim O'Sullivan died alone in his bed on Beecher Street, Mallow in Cork sometime in January 2001.Nobody found him for 22 years. His house stood on an ordinary residential areaboarded up and decaying. Mr O'Sullivan was born in Cahersiveen, Kerry, in 1939. He emigrated to England with his family and trained as a compositor in the printing trade. Relatives say was a capable worker and well liked. When his marriage broke down in the late 1980s, he bought the small terraced gaff at 9 Beecher Street in Cork and moved back to Ireland alone. He lived quietly, coping first with his new life after marriage, and kept to himself. When his sister Maureen stopped hearing from him, she went looking. In 2003 she called to the house and got no answer. Locals had already decided he'd gone back to England, so nobody filed a missing person report. The home sat decaying in full view for another decade. In December 2014, a local councillor noticed a broken window and emailed Cork County Council asking who owned it. By then O'Sullivan had already been dead almost fourteen years. The email went nowhere.Later, council contractors boarded up the front without checking inside. It was meant to tidy up an eyesore. Instead it sealed a tomb. The sad truth only surfaced on 13 January 2023, when council workers went in over a rat problem before calling pest control. Under a duvet, fully clothed, they found what was left of Tim O'Sullivan. A skeleton, partially mummified, undisturbed since 2001. Gardaí confirmed his identity through dental records. The pathologist found no trauma, just a man who died quietly in his sleep. A Tesco receipt, diary entries and the date his welfare payments stopped narrowed his death to between 9 and 23 January. The coroner recorded an open verdict, noting that a man had lain dead in a busy town for two decades, that a councillor had flagged the house a decade too late, and that even then, nobody ever knocked to check. His family called for a review of Ireland's derelict sites laws. Despite an unprecedented housing crisis, Ireland has over 20,000 registered derelict properties, and vacancy figures running into the hundreds of thousands once every empty home is counted. God knows how many are hiding a story like this. May he rest in peace. If you are lonely, regardless of your age, please reach out to your GP or local community centres. I'm involved volunteering in my own local one, and there are so many groups where isolated people meet up together to chat and do activities and it can be an absolute lifesaver. Humans aren't meant to be alone. Two Irish charities that tackle exactly what let Mr O'Sullivan slip through the cracks, isolation and housing are: alone.ie ALONE supports older people ageing at home, tackles loneliness. National Support & Referral Line 0818 222 024 threshold.ie Threshold gives housing rights advice, works to bring derelict homes back into use. 1800454454 My own local resource centre were we run men's and women's groups and older people's outreach mountviewfrc.com/