A psychiatric nurse has told how she called to carry out a welfare check on a 61-year-old client after he failed to turn up for a medical appointment, only to find him lying dead in a pool of blood in his home in Co Cork.Ciara Harmon said that in her capacity as a psychiatric nurse with the agency Housing First, she used to call to Michael Foley twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays at his home in Annville at Barrett’s Place in Macroom and she would have phone contact with him in between her visits.She said Foley would drink quite a lot, usually on Wednesday when he got his disability payments. She said she had been due to meet him at Merchant’s Quay Shopping Centre in Cork on February 1st, 2024, to attend a medical appointment at the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital for an ear infection, but he failed to show up.She rang Foley four to five times, but he never answered. That was not unusual. She let her supervisor know she could not make contact with him. As it was a bank holiday weekend, it was the following week before she tried to make contact with him again.While travelling from Bantry to Macroom on February 6th, she rang him four times but failed to get a response, and she rang him a fifth time at 12.50pm just before she entered his home at Annville, where she found the door open.“I went to the door of the livingroom and peered around the door and saw Michael’s feet on the floor – he was lying in front the couch,“ she said. “There was a large pool of congealed blood around him. His face was purple in colour. I was certain he was deceased.”Harmon was giving evidence on the second day of the trial of Daniel Hourigan, a native of Farranree in Cork city, who denied the murder of Foley at Annville, Barrett’s Place, Macroom on February 1st, 2024, when he was arraigned on the charge at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork. There was also blood on the couch near Foley and there was a large blood spatter across the wall along with a stale metallic smell in the room, said Harmon.Harmon said that although Foley would drink heavily when he got his payments, he presented himself well and kept his house very tidy. He was quite good at managing money and was able to save, she said.Cross-examined by defence counsel Ray Boland, Harmon said that when Foley moved into Annville first in October 2022, there were issues with people calling to him. “He was bringing people from the Simon for a session – he was quite lonely,” she said.Things had settled down but then he started inviting people to visit again, and she agreed with Boland she had found broken bottles on the floor when she called for three to four weeks before his death.His friend Neringa Stallioniene had applied to Housing First to become his carer, but the application was refused as it would have implications for both her own social welfare payments and Foley’s social welfare disability payments, she said.Garda Kieran Cremin of Macroom Garda Station told how he and Garda Fintan Coffey had responded to the call from Harmon and entered Foley’s house at Annville at about 1pm. Cremin was also involved in examining CCTV from around Macroom. He identified Foley returning home to Annville on the night of January 31st, and he later identified the accused, Hourigan, and a female companion, Linda O’Flynn, also pass by on their way to the property.He said that both Hourigan and O’Flynn were also captured on the same camera leaving Foley’s property at about 11am on February 1st, with O’Flynn passing by first and Hourigan passing by the camera some 90 seconds later.The case continues before a jury of six men and six women and Judge Siobhan Lankford.