Just after 11 p.m., Monday night, and Brian (14) should have been at home, warm, in bed. Though the night was dry, temperatures had fallen below freezing and with just a thin blanket about his knees, he was sitting on the ground outside Spar on Dame Street. With his slight frame, ginger hair and freckle-splashed face, he looked about 10.
"Oh great, great," he said as the Simon Community outreach workers, on their nightly soup run, approached.
"I'm from Finglas originally," he said, explaining that he had been living on the streets for "a year".
"My mam died and my dad is an alcie [alcoholic]. He doesn't know where I am." Brian didn't want to be photographed.
Shivering, he took two cups of beef and vegetable soup and three cigarettes from the outreach workers, as well as a cup of tea. "Has it sugar in it?" he asked.
"It's very cold, very cold. I got three blankets earlier and I had them hidden over there," he said, pointing towards Temple Bar. "When I came back someone had robbed them."
Asked why he wasn't in a hostel, he said he was "too young for any of the ones with any space" and that he wouldn't go to the i Garda - who must then call a social worker who should find him an emergency bed - because he hated the police, he said.
In nearby Temple Bar yesterday afternoon, James (15), was begging beneath the Central Bank. Dressed in a grubby yellow jumper, a red anorak around his shoulders and with a navy blue sleeping bag across his lap, he said he had been sleeping between hostels and the streets for more than a year.
"I used to live in Tallaght," he said, "but I didn't get on with my mam's boyfriend. He used to hit me and stuff. I haven't seen my dad in years. So I left."
He stayed around Tallaght for a while but moved towards the city centre where people didn't know him and his mother wouldn't be looking for him. He too preferred not to be photographed.
"I do get kind of down when I miss my mam sometimes." He said he had been offered drugs but had never taken them. "I drink a bit sometimes - cider maybe. And I smoke," he said, two cigarettes tucked behind his right ear. In Grafton Street yesterday afternoon about seven children, aged between nine and 14, were "busking" in scattered groups and individually.
Maria (14) was standing outside Marathon Sports, half singing, half yelling Jingle Bells. Reasonably well wrapped up in jumpers, a scarf and jacket, her long mousy brown hair needed washing. She said she was from Cappagh, near Finglas, and that she lived in a caravan.
"I'm doing this because I want money for Christmas," she said, "and to get food and stuff. I am sort of cold, but I like singing and I've nothing else to do."
She said she came into the city centre with her nine-year-old sister, Caroline. Caroline, a slip of a thing, looked freezing as she crouched in front of the branch of AIB opposite, a paper cup between her feet. According to Father Peter McVerry, who has provided accommodation to homeless boys for 20 years, "no one knows exactly how many under-18s are sleeping rough in Dublin. My guess is that there are anywhere 50 and 100."
There are 10 hostels for boys in Dublin, and two for girls, though according to Father McVerry the young homeless person's problems have changed though "the accommodation available to them by and large has not.
"No hostel will accept drug users. Some even insist that they attend school, so there is a mismatch between the young homeless person's needs and the services available."
He said preventive measures must be taken to target children at risk. Acknowledging that this was beginning to happen, he stressed that appropriate hostel accommodation must also be provided.
"You can't abandon a generation of existing homeless children by putting all the resources into preventive measures," he said.