At 3.40 p.m. yesterday a young teenager sat in a lane in inner-city Dublin "waiting for a friend".
Focus Ireland's day centre for young people had just closed for the day. A long evening stretched in front of the almost 900 homeless people in Dublin under the age of 18 who availed themselves of the homeless agency's services last year. Just four years ago that figure was 352.
Jean Rafter is the crisis liaison officer at the day centre, known to its members as "The Extension". It consists of several warm, bright rooms. In one, there are facilities for tea, coffee and snacks. In another, there is a pool table and colourful sofas.
Sitting on one of the sofas, Ms Rafter talked about young teenagers trying to hold their lives together. "The main problem is that there are too few beds available", she said.
According to the Eastern Health Board, there are 45 emergency places, but Ms Rafter maintains that this figure, on any given night, is more like eight or nine. Most of the beds were occupied by young people who are long-term residents.
"There is often a situation where you will have 20 people fighting over a few beds", she said.
According to Margaret O'Gorman, of Focus Ireland, the numbers of people using this out-of-hours service is under-reported. "Many, especially the younger ones, simply do not know that this service exists", she says.
Recent research by Focus Ireland indicates that the majority of young homeless people come from very specific areas of the city. "Poverty, social deprivation and lack of educational opportunities are the underlying causes", Ms O'Gorman said.
The key was more beds and more specialised services. "Services that can be accessed by people with chaotic lifestyles. You cannot tailor the people to the services, the services need to cater to the people", she said.
About 60 people a month access the day care centre. Of these, there is a core group which Ms Rafter describes as "chronically homeless". Among the under-18s, Ms Rafter estimates that between 60 and 70 per cent have a "serious drug addiction", usually to heroin.
The youngest on heroin is 14. There is one case of a young teenager who has a heroin problem so severe that he cannot access any of the accommodation services and has to sleep out every night.
The city's rehabilitation and detoxification services, which Ms Rafter says have shown a marked improvement in the past year, are also closed to him. "To access those services you have to show some determination and motivation, and it is very hard to do that when you are sleeping rough."