A Kentstown couple are being forced to sleep in their van and wear protective headphones when they walk around their home due to a constant buzzing and clicking noise from somewhere nearby.
Gemma and Tony Agnew, from Brownstown, have been suffering the noise for the last two years and despite the best efforts of Meath County Council and the Environmental Protection Agency nobody has yet been able to identify the source of the problem.
Gemma with her headphones on
When Meath Live visited on Monday morning, 26th June, a constant low buzz could clearly be heard.
Gemma told us, ‘ At first I thought I was going crazy and imagining it but then Tony managed to record it on his phone so I knew it was for real but the council and the EPA sent people out and could hear nothing.
‘The suspicion has to be was that whatever machine is making the noise was turned off when they were doing their inspections.
‘It is worse at night and worse inside the house so we have little choice but to wear headphones during the day and sleep outside in the van most nights.
‘The headphones I use are the same ones you would wear when using a jackhammer on a building site and the problem with outside is that we have to park the van in a certain part of the yard or else we can still hear it.
‘It’s not so bad sleeping in the van this time of year but during the winter it was freezing, I mean that literally, we’d wake up with frost all over the van..
‘If we try and sleep in the bedroom we get three hours at best before it wakes us up. I have been out walking the fields at 3 am to try and find out where it is coming from but found nothing so it must be inside somewhere.
‘The Dawn Meats factory is close by and they kindly sent some of their noise control people up here but they couldn’t establish any source either.
‘It was suggested we turn the radio up to drown out the noise but we have tried that and it is only when we get it to 97 decibels, which is extremely loud, that it has any effect.
‘We need help to get this sorted out sooner rather than later.’
