Life on the street: one man's story

"Peter" (32), from Shankill in Dublin, is one of our less successful returned emigrants. Having been unable to get work in London six years ago, he came back to Ireland, without money and with no family to turn to. He has been sleeping rough since.

"I was working as a painter here before we went to the UK. There was a group of six of us. The manager said he had to let us go because of lack of money. So we all went to the UK. We didn't do too well there either because there was a lot of bombing and the Irish were blacked. So I came back." Saturday afternoon saw him crouched just off Grafton Street, asking for money "to get something to eat".

When he came back from Britain, he went to the then Eastern Health Board and to his local authority, in the hope of finding accommodation.

"They wanted to put me in a hostel but I'm not a drug-user and there's more drugs in the hostels than there are outside. Sometimes I sleep on Andrew's Lane there, beside the café. I always sleep on the south side - the north side is too dangerous for sleeping out." He has no family, he says.

"I was taken off my family when I was three and put in a home. My father had a drink problem." He has nine brothers and sisters but not having grown up with them, he says, "I don't really know them".

His day starts with a visit to "an early café for a wash. I always approach the manager and ask can I use the bathroom, tell them I won't be five minutes." He also sometimes sees a doctor about his depression, which returned following the breakdown of a relationship before he went to Britain. He is on medication, but dislikes taking it while sleeping rough.

"This [the streets] is not the right place to take tablets. The ones I'm on make you drowsy and fall asleep and it's not safe." Asked whether he thinks anything has been done for the homeless over the past six years, he stops for a moment.

"Well, the hostels have been done up a lot, but there's not that many of them and they are still full of drugs. And you still see the same people homeless, the same people are there on the streets as when I first came back. And there's more sleeping rough than there used to be.

"If the Government is spending money on homeless, I don't know where it's going, because the homeless aren't getting it. If they care so much about the homeless, why am I still here, six years later?" A question about what he'd like from life elicits a smile.

"A roof over my head, and I'd like to have a relationship with someone again. I do get lonely, And I would like to work again. I enjoyed working," he nods, "and I was good at the painting."