As the frost thawed in the early sunlight on Friday, people sleeping rough in Dublin’s city centre were bracing for a protracted cold spell in the days ahead.
Nikita ‘Nikki’ Kenny was sitting on the pavement outside a supermarket on North Earl Street with a bag of her belongings. She said she has been sleeping on Talbot Street for seven months, but has been homeless for 18 years.
She slept in the doorway of a cafe on Thursday night. “It was cold last night ... it’s to get actually colder,” she said.
Several weather warnings are in effect for the weekend – Dublin will be under a yellow warning for snow and ice from 5pm on Saturday to 5pm on Sunday.
Ireland weather update: Heavy snow in parts as Met Éireann says cold spell will continue into next few days
‘My friend was sleeping with another friend’s boyfriend and refuses to take responsibility’
‘I actually felt unsafe as an English person in the Aviva’
I loved Alice Munro but recent revelations have tainted her legacy forever
Ms Kenny said she has had trouble getting a sleeping bag. “I had to sleep with jackets over me for the last two nights, until a girl actually went into her hostel, and took a duvet out for me,” she said.
She also believes that there is a dearth of women’s homeless hostels in the city, which makes it difficult for her to find a place to stay.
“If you walk up and down Gardiner Street, every door is a hotel or a hostel. And they’re all men’s [hostels],” she said. “There’s a couple of mother and baby units thrown in there but every hostel is a man’s hostel.”
Ms Kenny’s three children live with her sister at present. “Thank God that I have her because I wouldn’t be able to drag them around in this life. It’s hard but, look, we have to do it,” she said.
She is worried about the impending cold weather. “I got on relatively okay [last night]. It’s next week that I’m worried about. Ten centimetres of snow, it’s going to be tough ... but we’ll have to face it, and see how it is.”
On Eden Quay Conor, who did not want to give his surname, was sitting outside a convenience store. He said he sleeps by the Ilac shopping centre in the north inner city.
Outreach workers with Dublin Simon Community had offered him a bed in a hostel on Thursday night, he said.
“I don’t like the hostels. I don’t like how it’s only part-time accessible,” he said. “Sometimes they come with no offers of a hostel ... last night they had a bed for everyone if they wanted one.”
Conor said that, due to struggles with his mental health, he avoids staying in temporary emergency accommodation, as he feels he would be “investing into something that’s not going to be a guarantee; it’s not a security for me”.
Instead, he opts to stay on the streets. “Last night was cold, [but it] wasn’t that cold ... I was dry last night, I had cardboard ... I had shelter from the wind ... some nights I never get them graces, you know?”
He is registered with homelessness services in a county outside Dublin; without secure housing, he said, he feels “trapped like this”.
On the steps leading up to Connolly Station, a man who give his name as Grant is sitting, his head covered with a sleeping bag. He slept at the train station on Thursday night. It was “freezing ... freezing,” he said.
[ Number of homeless people passes 15,000 for first time since records beganOpens in new window ]
Grant, who had a bloodied nose and two badly bruised eyes, said that he had been assaulted by a group of men overnight. “They robbed me,” he said. He said he is registered with homelessness services in his home county of Longford: “Just trying to get enough money to go home now.”
A Bulgarian man who gave his name as Krasamir was lying in a sleeping bag on North Earl Street on Friday. Speaking with the aid of Google Translate, he said he has been sleeping on the streets for more than a week but on Thursday night he had been offered a place in a hostel.
He wants to stay in Ireland to work, he said, adding: “I want someone to come and help me stay somewhere, somewhere where it is not cold.”
At Charlemont Luas stop, a man sitting in a sleeping bag said he had slept in the city centre on Thursday night. “Change, hostel; no change, street,” he said.
New figures compiled by Dublin Simon Community found that, on the week of November 4th to 10th, 134 people were rough sleeping in the area covered by the four Dublin local authorities – a 14 per cent increase on the 2023 figure.
The number does not include international protection applicants awaiting an offer of accommodation.
Meanwhile, figures released by the Department of Housing on Friday show that 15,199 people accessed emergency accommodation in November, a monthly rise of 233.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
