Christina (Dinah) Dodrill (47) was born with a mild form of spina bifida. For most of her adult life she has been a wheelchair-user. She works in the Women's Resource Centre in Ballymun in Dublin and is chairperson of BADIG (Ballymun Active Disability Interest Group). She has two children: Richard (23) and Lorraine (21), both of whom live with her in a house in Ballymun

Getting Around

I used to be on crutches when I was young, but I had an amputation, so now I use a manually operated wheelchair. I want to stay active while I can. I'll save the power chair for when I have my blue rinse!

I work every morning from 9.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. at the Women's Resource Centre. Work is less than half a mile away, which is great. My route to work along Balbutcher Lane is downhill. The kerbs have been dished (dropped). A few of us in BADIG went on a walkabout to show the engineer from the Corporation which kerbs needed to be dished, and soon after that, the work was done. There are about five other wheelchair users in Ballymun and it's a big improvement for all of us.

Because of all the building that's going on in Ballymun, some of my route to work is very rough, with temporary ramps and a lot of dust. It's going to be like this in Ballymun for the next 10 years - a big building site.

Getting home from work is less easy - it's an uphill journey and the wind is often against me. If the pavement is wet, the wheelchair slips and my hands get muddy.

For the 24 years I've lived in Ballymun, none of the buses have been wheelchair accessible. If I wanted to go anywhere, I had to take a taxi. No transport meant I couldn't get a job or participate in a lot of activities. I was very isolated. BADIG did some lobbying and we got a new, wheelchair-accessible bus, the 104, which stops in Ballymun every hour until 9.05 p.m. It goes to the OmniPark Centre in Santry, through Coolock to Beaumont Hospital, and then on to the Clontarf Dart Station. Because of that new service, which began in the spring, I was able to go to Howth on the DART recently. It was a great day out for me.

You can get specially-adapted cars with hand controls and I did pass my driving test in 1976. But I didn't see myself being able to afford a car, so I didn't renew my licence. If I tried to buy a car now the insurance alone would be sky-high.

My son's girlfriend has a car. She brought me to the Square in Tallaght to buy wallpaper for the front room. She's a beautician, and she gave me a facial too. I was really pampered that day.

Work

I love my job. I'm on a three-year Community Employment Scheme, which started in 1997. It's due to finish in December and I don't know what I'll do after that. Before I got this job I was stuck at home, day-in day-out, bored.

There are four of us at work: Tony, who's also a wheelchair user and involved in BADIG, and two other girls. It's a drop-in centre and information service. I give out information on family law, social welfare, education and disability. People come in looking for their CV to be done up on the computer, or we can check the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs database for any information they need about entitlements. People might have a question about their disability allowance. There are meetings and the phone has to be answered. Sometimes I'm there until after 2 p.m.

BADIG has 25-30 members and we have meetings once a month. At the moment we're concerned because BRL (Ballymun Regeneration Ltd) is unwilling to put lifts into the new three- and four-storey apartment blocks they are going to build. The claim is that a lift will make the apartments less private and therefore reduce their value. This is a form of social exclusion. What if a wheelchair user wants to visit a relative in the apartments?

We're asking BRL to make sure all the new houses they are building are fully adaptable, in case the resident becomes a wheelchair user. Of the 10 new houses to be built near me, two bungalows will be ready for wheelchair users, and five will have reasonable access. But BRL keeps changing its plans. I've been writing to politicians like Bobby Molloy, Noel Ahern and Pat Carey looking for support for BADIG during our lobbying of BRL.

When I went out to work in 1997 I realised that nothing was being done for people with disabilities in Ballymun. We set up BADIG in 1998 and organised a conference called "Shifting the Blame", with key policy workers and decision makers in Ballymun. Combat Poverty gave us a grant to publish the conference papers and we made a video called "Stuck on the Roundabout" to illustrate the problem disabled people were going to face with all the new building in Ballymun. After we made that video, BRL put a health and safety officer in place.

I've been lucky because my supervisor Kathleen Maher at the Women's Resource Centre has given me a lot of support for my BADIG work. BADIG uses the facilities in the centre and we have our meetings there as well.

Money

On Thursday I get paid. For what I do at the Resource Centre, which is called "rehabilitative employment", it's £75 a week (it was £30 when I started - I was delighted, I thought it was great). I go to the Credit Union for payback time on my loan. I borrowed money to decorate my bedroom and my front room. I'm lucky because if I didn't have my job, I wouldn't have been given a loan. I also get a small disability allowance.

There are always bills to pay. I got an instant shower installed and it will take me a year and a half to pay it off on the ESB bill. I have to pay the pipe man (for the TV) and the grass man (for mowing the grass). I want to get some paint for the kitchen but I can't afford it this week. I don't qualify for a free phone or electricity because I'm living with two adults. We have a phone, but we only use it for incoming calls because I can't afford to make calls out.

The AIB bank in Ballymun is not wheelchair accessible (the one in Finglas is, but that's £8 in a taxi). BADIG lobbied AIB to do something about the Ballymun branch, so they're going to build a ramp. I have a home help, Maria, paid for by the Eastern Health Board, who has been coming to me twice a week for over 20 years. If I need business done in the bank, she goes for me. She's great. She cleans the floor and does others things in the house I can't manage.

I usually do my weekly shopping on a Thursday. My daughter Lorraine comes with me. She takes ages to get ready! We have to pay a £10 deposit on a trolley from Tesco so we can take it home with us. Then I have to wait until Lorraine is in the mood to take the trolley back to collect the deposit. My son Richard gives me his wages and Lorraine is on the labour. They don't realise what it costs to run a house. When Richard comes with me to the shops he throws everything into the trolley: he's desperate!

Family

Richard is a cabinet maker and Lorraine is expecting a baby. They both live with me. I like the company. I don't like being alone. Lorraine is great. We're more like friends than mother and daughter.

I lived with their father for eight years, but it didn't work. I reared them from when they were small. I didn't mind. When you're younger, you don't really think. The neighbours were helpful too, taking Richard on football outings.

Lorraine is due in November so we're getting bits and pieces in for the baby. She's always wanted children and her boyfriend feels okay about it. There'll be big changes in the house, but it will be lively.

Health

I used to sleep upstairs but my chairlift is 20 years old and I'm getting that bit older, so making the transfer from the wheelchair into the chairlift at night was getting more difficult. I was getting nervous. The Corporation built an extra bedroom and bathroom on the ground floor. I got a loan from the Credit Union to decorate the new extension and buy furniture. It's lovely.

I get pain sometimes, from sitting in this bucket-shaped chair. The shape of it means I'm dipped back, which is a good angle for pushing the wheels, but I'm going to have to change it for a chair with a flat seat. As it is I have to take painkillers sometimes, and they make me sick. I went to the Mater to get a new prescription (it took seven months for the appointment) and I have to wait for them to send it to my GP. The new chair, which I'm getting in October, will be harder to push, but hopefully more comfortable.

As I get older I think more and more about my disability and what road it will take me down. There's always that fear - what if I get worse, who will look after me.

Time Out

The library is a 20-minute push down the road. I read a good bit - history, novels, biographies. When I get fed up reading a book, I read Hello!, for something light. I retired from sport in 1990. I used to compete in the International Games in Stoke Mandeville in the UK and I was in the Para-Olympics in Korea in 1988. I did three individual field events: discus, javelin and shot; and the pentathlon. I was in a basketball team for years. I was lucky; I had friends who used to bring me to training, sometimes several times a week.

After work I go home, have a cup of tea and a rest, and take a shower. Around 6 p.m. we have dinner. I'm the one who does the cooking. In the evenings we watch telly. I like the National Geographic Channel, with all the documentaries. I also watch Coronation Street and EastEnders, and to keep up my knowledge of current affairs, I watch Prime Time and Questions and Answers.

We might go down the road to the Penthouse for a drink. They have music sometimes. We're having a fundraiser there for BADIG later this month. We have a band booked. We'll use the money to send our members on a weekend training course in Roscommon.

When Lorraine has to go for her appointments in the Rotunda, I go with her. It's a treat to have a day in town. We look around the shops. The ILAC, the Jervis St Centre - I like them all. I go in and try on clothes. Lorraine helps me put them on and tells me how I look. Penneys on Mary Street has a changing-room that's up three steps so I can't use it.

Sometimes on a Saturday morning my boyfriend JohnJoe and I take the 104 bus to Finglas to have our breakfast and do a bit of shopping. On a Saturday night we might go to the pictures. We take the 104 to the Omni and then get a taxi back.

Because we know a lot of people, we often get invited out to weddings and christenings at the weekend. There's always something going on. I like a singsong, and I have been known to do a bit of dancing. I like putting on my tapes of Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra. I come from a family of 13 and my dad was a great Sinatra fan - he passed it on to all of us.

Ballymun

I'd never leave Ballymun. There's a strong community here. We have our problems, but there are social problems everywhere. I actually feel very safe here. A lot of people know me from seeing me in the wheelchair. At this stage they don't see the wheelchair any more, they see me.

Dinah Dodrill in conversation with Katie Donovan