Retired bookie's clerk Claire Harte had lived for 40 years in a north Dublin community. So how could her body lie undiscovered in her home for six weeks, asks Nuala Macklin.

As soap character Mike Baldwin lay on the cobbled surface of Coronation Street, some 14 million viewers in Britain and Ireland watched him take his final breath on the night of April 7th. His passing was widely mourned, on television, radio and over cups of tea on both sides of the Irish Sea.

On that same night, in her terraced cottage on a once cobbled street, Claire Harte lay dead on her living-room floor, unnoticed by a living soul. The television was still on, as was the three-bar electric heater. It is believed that she may have been dead for four weeks at that point.

Another two weeks would pass before the alarm was raised about Claire's absence; not by a neighbour in the snug and enviably immaculate Shamrock Street in Dublin's north inner city, but by a friend.

This friend lives in a neighbouring parish and had called to Claire's house during the day on a number of occasions over the previous weeks, but had received no reply. On her last visit, she went at night-time and noticed there was a light on in the house. Claire was last seen alive on March 4th.

What is perplexing about the circumstances of Claire Harte's death is that it doesn't fit into the cliched scenario of the neglected, lonely recluse. This woman could never, in any sense, be described as a withdrawn individual.

Instead, words including "beautiful", "elegant", "cultured", "active", "loved children and the young", "intelligent", "extremely fashion-conscious", "kind", "well-travelled" and "deeply religious" are used to describe her. Before retiring in the 1970s, she worked as a senior clerk for many years at Kilmartin's Turf Accountants in Abbey Street, where she was highly regarded.

One of her many friends describes her as "the happiest person you could imagine. She walked everywhere, and was so light on her feet you'd find it hard to keep up with her. No one would believe she was nearly 80 years of age. Some thought she was still in her 60s, she was so agile. To think of her lying there all alone, for six weeks or more? It's a terrible tragedy. We are all broken-hearted about Claire."

Her strong links with the world were in many ways attributable to her religious practice, which included daily, and sometimes twice daily, Mass in a number of different churches. She was an active member of religious prayer groups in her own and some surrounding parishes. A passionate soul, by all accounts, Claire was happy to join a group of protesters and maintain a vigil outside a new and "unwelcome sex shop" that had opened in the area.

As well as being a keen photographer, she was a music lover and member of the John McCormack Society. Her musical side was inherited from her father, Bill Harte, a former Garda sergeant at Fitzgibbon Street station and a well-known traditional musician.

Claire's white lace curtains in Shamrock Street were not used for peeking out on the world from her front parlour. Instead, they concealed a room that was piled to the ceiling with boxes of her "special items". She is described as "an avid shopper" who "only bought the best of everything". While she slept in her Shamrock Street home each night of the week, she preferred to entertain friends at her "more glamorous" second house in Phibsboro. The house was bequeathed to Claire in the 1970s by a grateful lady she had taken care of.

There were several contributing factors to the length of time it took to discover Claire's body. Among her close neighbours, two are themselves elderly, while a family who knew her well were away at the time of her death. Her circle of friends extended as far as Co Wicklow, but most only knew each other's first names, which made keeping in touch difficult, other than through Claire herself.

When asked about Claire, another neighbour says: "I didn't know the woman. I don't know anyone along here."

There are 24 houses in the little street.

Another factor was that Claire Harte chose to keep the world beyond her doorstep in Shamrock Street, with few people getting invited into the clean but dishevelled house. A considerable pile of correspondence found in the living room indicated that she had kept in touch with relatives in Australia, Indonesia and Canada until recently.

Her GP had apparently not seen Claire "in years" and says "I knew very little about her".

One of the gardaí called to force an entry into the house says he found Claire's body "lying face down on a floor piled high with newspapers and bags from one corner of the room to the other". Formal identification of the body was only possible using dental records.

"One of the saddest things for me was not just that this is not an uncommon occurrence for us," he says. "It was that after the doctor and the undertaker had attended and gone from Shamrock Street that night, there was no one to call and tell about Miss Harte's death."

There are an estimated 463,000 people over the age of 65 in the Republic. Their circumstances have received greater public scrutiny recently, following revelations about Leas Cross Nursing Home last year and the deaths of two elderly people (one in Wexford, one in Ballymena) in controversial circumstances earlier this year. While we may comfort ourselves with the thought that the majority of our senior citizens are safe and properly cared for, some still fall below the radar.

According to 88-year-old Mary Peacock of Shamrock Street, "the corner shop and post office being gone is a huge loss to us all. These were great ways of keeping an eye on each other and making sure everybody was all right. We might have a bit of money in our pockets nowadays, but we've lost an awful lot. People don't look after each other any more. It's horrible now.

"I remember how Claire loved shoes and clothes - Charles Jordan and Bally are what she liked. She went to the Grafton Academy [of Dress Designing] and sometimes made her own suits. The last time I remember seeing her, a couple of months ago, it was very cold and she was wearing a big brown fur hat like the Russians wear. She was always very smart. Just beautiful."

One family will shortly celebrate spending 100 years, through four generations, in Shamrock Street. Claire herself lived there for 40 years. How her death could remain undiscovered for such a long time in a location with such an established community is baffling - almost.

Soaring house prices, beyond the reach of many young people, make it impossible for the new generation to live in the same area they grew up in. The knock-on effect of this is the crumbling of community in the traditional sense. We read of many proposed initiatives to encourage a renewal of volunteering, with the aim of supporting and protecting the most vulnerable, but this will be an uphill battle when you look at jaded couples who struggle to meet their mortgage repayments and childcare costs and spend hours each day in grid-locked traffic.

The dwindling numbers of churchgoers and clergy flag the decline of another traditional networking stronghold, while the increasing unwillingness of GPs to make house calls due to personal security and other issues creates another weak link (not to mention the apparent shortage of public health nurses).

Watching our "virtual" neighbours in Coronation Street and Albert Square seems to have replaced interaction with real neighbours.

Paradoxically, it was Claire Harte's strength and independent spirit that rendered her vulnerable at the end of her life.

"It is often very difficult to strike a balance between respecting an elderly person's right to privacy and the need to keep an eye on the vulnerable," says a spokesman for Age Action, Gerard Scully. "People don't often associate being independent with being vulnerable, when in fact there can be a link. If you feel a neighbour might need your help, it's better to take the risk on being embarrassed thanto regret you didn't."

Claire's funeral was delayed so that her niece could travel from Indonesia to attend the requiem Mass. In his homily at the funeral last Friday, Rev Patrick Keenan OCD said Claire's life had been very much centred around caring for the elderly.

"As a young girl, she desperately wanted to become a nun and join the order of the Poor Clare Sisters. This, her father vehemently opposed," he told the large congregation of friends and neighbours gathered in St Joseph's Church on Berkeley Road.

The priest recalled Claire's deep admiration for a former taoiseach.

"Claire would have been absolutely delighted to think she was being laid to rest on the same morning as Charles J Haughey," he said. "I can remember her saying: 'We all have our faults, but he was classy!' "

Her niece, Lorraine Lyons, who works as a midwife in Jakarta, says: "I'm very pleased to see that my aunt obviously had so many friends who all cared for her, and that she was so well thought of. I can see that they're all mortified that she was there for so long before being discovered.

"I'm happy that this awful story should be told so that it doesn't happen again," she adds. Ultimately, she wouldn't let people into her house. I would like to say, keep your eyes open and if you're worried about a neighbour, tell someone. Take that second glance and see if a light is on or look for the usual signs that says someone is okay. There's a lesson for all of us here."

Claire was laid to rest beside her parents in Glasnevin Cemetery.