DUBLIN'S DISPOSSESSED

The capital's homeless and begging population has never been more visible.
Rosita Boland takes to the streets and finds that heroin is a major factor

It's Christmas, with all the tinsel and frenzy that brings: the office
lunch, the evening parties, those trips to the airport to meet family and
friends. Latenight shopping, pantomime openings, overflowing pubs and
people thronging to see the latest seasonal movies endless reasons to be
out and about on the streets longer and later than usual.

But there are some people already there who will not be going home at the
end of the day. They're the ones who sleep wherever they can find shelter:
part of Ireland's increasing homeless population, many of whom are begging.

In Dublin, their homes are doorways in Grafton Street; the garden at the
end of South Great George's Street; covered alleys around Government
Buildings; the Merchant's Quay archway and other quieter, darker places
around the city where a blanket or sleeping bag can be stored in the hope
it will be there on returning in the evening.

"I was based out of Dublin from 1990 until earlier this year," says Sgt
Fergus Healy of Pearse Street Garda Station, "and what hit me most on my
return was the number of people now begging and sleeping on the streets."

At its national conference in October the Simon Community called on the
Government "as a matter of urgency, to establish a commission on
homelessness which would address the issue in a comprehensive and strategic
way". Because, by definition, a homeless population is transient, there are
no exact figures for those numbers now sleeping rough.

What is certain is that the Eastern Health Board dealt with 4,000
applications for emergency accommodation in 1996, the majority of those in
Dublin. Also last year almost 6,000 people contacted Focus Ireland, which
works to alleviate homelessness. The nightly soup run which the Simon
community organises yearround to Butt Bridge and Heuston Station also
reports a big increase in adults using the service. In the last year the
numbers have risen from 53 to 182.

"The people using this service would be sleeping rough," says Donna
Doherty, Simon's information officer. The people sleeping rough are those
who make up the hard core of the homeless. Other officially homeless people
are those who are in emergency accommmodation such as voluntarily run
hostels and shelters; those who are accommodated by the Eastern Health
Board and those who compose what Focus calls "the hidden homeless" the
ones who move around from friend to friend, sleeping on floors.

Who are these people? Why are they on the streets in such increasing
numbers? Neither Focus nor Simon would agree to putting a journalist in
contact with people using their services who are on the streets. "It takes
our outreach team some time to build up a trusting relationship with young
people on the streets. We don't like to jeopardise that trust in any way,"
says Michael Bruton, chief executive of Focus.

According to Sgt Healy, who has a citycentre beat, the vast majority of
those now on the streets are in their late teens and early 20s. Asked why
he thinks this is so, he says simply: "You don't last long on the streets."

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, the president of Focus, says that almost 50 per
cent of the people who come to it for help are under the age of 25.

Children begging on the streets, according to Sgt Healy, tend to be mainly
from the travelling community and are far fewer in number than the adults.
At present, children are less visible on the streets of Dublin, possibly as
a result of the ISPCC's new programme which involves approaching children
who are begging and returning them to their families. Since ISPCC staff
don't wear uniforms they aren't recognised by the children on approach,
unlike gardaí, who they run away from on sight.

Focus and Simon agree that addiction is a common denominator among adults
sleeping rough on the streets, heroin being the primary drug. "It's a long
day, a day on the street," points out Sgt Healy. "Drugs help to get someone
through the day. And people on the streets tend to think shortterm, not
longterm. Either someone reaches out and manages to help them or they
drift off into the darkness."

With addiction comes a need for money. "The minimum you need to support a
heroin habit in Dublin is £30£40 a day," says Sgt Healy. "Begging is an
alternative to crime but only the fittest survive even at begging. The
strongest ones dominate the best pitches." In central Dublin and out as far
as Baggot Street and Ranelagh, most cashdispensing machines and 24hour
shops now have someone begging outside them. Some hold simple cardboard
signs saying "Homeless, Please Help". Others hold out paper cups.

"Sometimes you're better off tapping than going out robbing," says Kevin
(34), who was sleeping rough in York Street when we met. "Tapping" is the
word used to describe begging by people who've done it at one time or
another.

Kevin left school at 14 and trained as a panel beater. When he was 18 the
garage he worked for closed down. He has not been employed since. He was on
heroin but now he's on a methadone programme. Over coffee in Bewleys, he is
cleanshaven and cleareyed but looks worn: awake from three o'clock the
previous night because of frost.

His main pitch for begging was outside Marks & Spencer on Liffey Street.
"The best thing about having a pitch is that you get regular customers." He
uses the word "customers" unselfconsciously: that businesslike term more
usually associated with trade. He knows people begging who collect up to
£80 a day on a regular basis. He averaged about £40 a day when he was doing
it.

There seems to be little solidarity among the floating population of
beggars. "Everyone is out to look after themselves," he says with
disquieting honesty.

"Some people go out tapping in pairs although you usually make more on your
own." Why is this? "Protection." Kevin has been asked to go out with people
usually women and stay near them to act as a deterrent. "I'd be minding
them from other fellas on the street." He knows people who have been
begging and were either beaten up or robbed, or both.

Now selling The Big Issues, he doesn't like sharing a streetspace with
anyone who is begging or busking. It's competition and, scotching any myth
of solidarity among the dispossessed, he adds that he will "have a go" at
people who won't move on when he asks. This would be common, especially in
busy citycentre locations, such as O'Connell Bridge, Temple Bar, Grafton
Street and the streets off it.

Niall Skelly, editor of The Big Issues, says that for the 500 people
selling it at any one time it's an alternative to begging. The vendors are
either homeless or longterm unemployed. Of the £1.50 cover price, the
vendor keeps 80 pence .

"It gives people dignity. The general public are always asking me 'Does The
Big Issues do any good for the people who sell it?' and I tell them to ask
the vendors, not me," says Skelly.

Among the literature which Focus uses to publicise its services are
suggested reasons as to why homelessness occurs. "People become homeless
because of a breakdown in relationship with a partner or their family and
because of lack of income and accessible accommodation." Addiction,
marriage breakdown or relationships which have gone wrong are stories Sgt
Healy has listened to again and again among the homeless people he talks to
on his beat.

Asked where he think the cycle begins if he thinks being on the street
leads to addiction or if addiction results in a life on the street? he
considers carefully: "Somewhere the social system has failed them. It can't
support them. But I don't know where that happens."

The next time I meet Kevin, John is with him. He wants to tell how he has
ended up begging on the streets. Also 34, John was made redundant from his
job with a computer company in 1992. He could not find another job.
Depression led to a dependency on sleeping tablets. Then his marriage
collapsed and he moved in with friends. "But I couldn't stay there forever."

For a year and a half he slept rough in Setanta Place, begging in Dame
Street by day. "Being on the street is like being on a carousel. It goes
round and round but you never get anywhere. I used to wake up in the
morning with my head full of stuff I didn't want to think about. I wanted
to escape and there was nowhere to go except somewhere else in my head." He
became addicted to heroin.

"Being on heroin is a 24hour job," he says. "You have to keep going until
you get the money for your fix. I thought of robbing, but I wasn't cut out
for it, so I begged instead," he says matteroffactly. He needed at least
£40 a day, eating only "when I remembered. Maybe once every two days." The
most he ever made was £250 one bank holiday weekend sitting outside the
Olympia, where there was a show on.

"It helps when it rains. People give you more then." He corrects himself.
"Women give you more. It was almost always women who gave me money." He
often got into physical fights to protect his pitch. "It's everyone for
themselves where money is concerned. But there is a bit of support
sometimes. People sometimes tell you about a handy place to sleep if they
see you out. Somewhere that's dry."

Life on the streets, as told by John, is brutally fragile. Since 1995, when
he first slept rough, he has lost six friends who were in a similar
situation. John's friends died on the street and in squats. "Cirrhosis of
the liver, dirty needles, doing themselves damage when they were out of it,
fires they lit to keep warm which went out of control."

The death which has affected him most profoundly is that of a girl who died
in a fire last September in a Kevin Street squat with another young girl.
"When you're on the streets you never get any good news, but this was the
worst." She was one of the people he had previously shared a squat with in
Parnell Square.

Having gone through a methadone programme he now sells The Big Issues on
O'Connell Street making "about £1015 a day". He is still officially
homeless as he is staying with friends again but still knows many of the
people on the streets. Asked to hazard a guess at the numbers presently
sleeping rough in Dublin, he replies without hesitation "between 170 and
200": a figure which tallies with recipients of Simon's soup run. How many
of these does he think would be heroin addicts? "99 per cent."

I miss Kevin's call from a phonebox to say he has with him another friend,
a woman who is living on the streets and willing to talk about it there and
then. She doesn't make contact again.

Later, Kevin says: "You have to catch us when you can."